Premise: An Afghani refugee attempts to find meaning and connection in her new life of the US.
Let me cut to the chase: I loved this movie and it's one of three from this Sundance that has really stuck with me. It's one of the most "Sundancy" movies I saw of the 20 Sundance offerings I watched. It's a simple movie with only a few locations. It relies more on mood than plot. Sometimes the decision to go black and white can really annoy me. I don't know if in this case it was a stylistic decision or a budgetary one. Either way, it matched star Anaita Wali Zada's vibe. This is a dryly comic performance. I loved how much she did by not giving an inch. Her silence in response to a prompt from another person was like saying "You know what I'm going to say to that, so how about you respond as though I said it already?" The fact that she gets a job as a fortune cookie writer seems like something that only exists in a movie, but I'm willing to go with it.
Ultimately, it's a movie about loneliness and struggling to connect. Zada manages to play her character, Donya, both incredibly guarded yet exposed in key ways. She's entirely impenetrable unless you know the exact way to get to her. That's why the meet-cute with Jeremy Allen White late is so, well, cute. And the amount of the meet-cute the movie gives is perfect.
I don't think Fremont will work for everyone. It seems a bit cold at first and you do have to work to find the things to grab hold of. Like Donya though, once you get underneath the hard exterior, there's a really sweet movie underneath.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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