On paper, May in the Summer, the latest film from
Amreeka writer/director Cherien
Dabis, sounds like a Middle-Eastern version of Eat, Pray, Love. Woman struggling to figure out the next step of
her professional life wonders if she’s found romantic fulfillment, and travels
abroad to consider her options and herself. But where most other films would
turn to clichéd Orientalism, cultural whitewashing, and heteronormative whimsy
to construct a happy ending, May in the Summer
pushes back against all that. It veers into silliness every so often, but the
film knows where it’s going, even if it feels familiar.
Dabis, who writes
and directs here, also stars in the film as May, a half-Palestinian,
half-American woman living in New York City with her fiancé Ziad (Alexander
Siddig), an expert on the Palestinian economy who teaches at Columbia
University. She recently published a well-regarded and critically admired book
linking Arabic proverbs with the history of and everyday life in the Middle
East, and after years of living together, she and Ziad are finally getting
married. But when she makes the trip to her childhood home of Amman, Jordan,
alone, a month before the wedding, her family thinks something is up.
Younger sisters
Yasmine (Nadine Malouf) and Dalia (Alia Shawkat) are confused about why she
doesn’t seem that excited for her wedding, and why she’s letting Ziad’s mother
plan an ostentatious, over-the-top ceremony that goes against May’s more
low-key personality. And on the other hand, there’s May’s very-Christian mother
Nadine (Hiam Abbass), who is shocked and disgusted that May is engaged to Ziad,
a Muslim. It doesn’t matter to Nadine that May isn’t a practicing Christian or
that Ziad isn’t a practicing Muslim; “Marrying outside of your religion, your
culture, it’s all the same—it never works.”
Nadine is
speaking from bitter experience: Her marriage to the girls’ American father,
Edward (Bill Pullman), ended in divorce, after 20 years of Nadine suffering
through Edward’s wandering eye and constant travel. The rest of May’s family
also isn’t that supportive: At a family dinner, her cousin casually but
confidently mentions that she’s certainly going to Hell for marrying a Muslim,
and it doesn’t seem like her sisters have ever met Ziad, either.
The wedding
seems like more of a question mark than an exclamation point—but so do other
parts of May’s life, like her faith (she’s decidedly secular, but her mother
keeps badgering her into being more religious), what her next book will be
about (she’s had writers block for months, and practically has a panic attack
whenever anyone asks, “What are you writing next?”), and her relationship with
her sisters. She has something like annoyed contempt for Yasmine, who recently
lost her job but is partying hard and hooking up with random guys, and bemused
detachment for Dalia, whose sarcasm is certainly a defense mechanism. As May
tries to discover who she is—not only on her own but also in this place, with
this family, and with Ziad—the film balances your typical dysfunctional family
drama with glimpses into life in the Middle East.
How often are
there films about the differences between Christians and Muslims in the Middle
East? We’ve had plenty about Muslims and Jews, but a film about Christians and
Muslims feels inherently rare. What’s interesting here is the way the film sidesteps
the basics of how Christians and Muslims must automatically hate each other in
favor of exploring how people manifest their beliefs into layers of identity.
Nadine doesn’t preach about how Jesus is everyone’s savior—well, not that
often—but her Christianity is a way to connect with other people, to craft a
social circle for herself after her divorce, to maintain her Palestinian
heritage while being unable to ever go back there. She hasn’t taken the time to
understand Ziad being a secular Muslim, but she doesn’t want to; anything that
isn’t Christianity is a threat to her identity and a threat to her daughters’,
too. That reaction isn’t unique and it isn’t treated as villainy here; it’s
just treated as how May and her sisters grew up. The film’s light touch regarding
what could be a tricky issue is welcome, and helps all the familial
interactions maintain believability.
But May in the Summer isn’t as good when it
comes to depth for all of its characters; Nadine is the most fully realized,
but May, Yasmine, and Dalia are successful to varying degrees. Because May’s
entire persona is wrapped in unease, her relationship with Ziad remains mostly
a mystery, which is frustrating given how great of an actor Siddig is and how
little he has to do. But there’s a familiarity between Dabis, Shawkat, and
Malouf that makes their sisterhood work, even though Yasmine only has “big
mouth” and Dalia only has “difficult alternative kid” as personal signifiers. They’re
not particularly detailed characters, but the scenes of the sisters
together—boredly browsing a lingerie store with their mother in tow; drunkenly eating
falafel together; exchanging suffered looks while eating dinner with their
estranged father and his new, younger wife; sharing secrets in a dark bedroom,
smoking cigarettes out of a window—ring true.
Ultimately,
though, while May in the Summer
paints a compelling family portrait, May remains a largely opaque character, so
the film doesn’t totally deliver as a tale of her self-discovery. As an exploration
of entrenched cultural identities or children-of-divorce sisterhood, though, it’s
more convincing and more engaging. And a totally happy ending—that wouldn’t be
realistic, would it? And if May in the
Summer does anything right, it’s realism.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Guttenbergs
