Two winning performances mine the gentler, more comical possibilities in France’s complicated, often fraught relationship with its Arab immigrant community as the beautiful yet serious-minded Djemila (Rachida Brakni) moves away from her traditional Algerian home and into her own apartment, next door to bumbling single mom Emma (Isabelle Carre). In her crisply cut, understated work clothes, Djemila represents the modern young immigrant in France: upwardly mobile, striving for success, eager to shed the perceived backwardness of her culture yet still fiercely loyal to its sometimes suffocating traditions. Torn between her French lover and the Algerian suitor chosen for her by her family, Djemila struggles to balance the weight of expectations with her desire to uncover her own true identity. With unlikely encouragement from the disorganized Emma, Djemila ultimately discovers that the values she thought she was so desperate to shed are, in fact, the ones that she holds most dear.
