Foreign Letters

FOREIGN LETTERS (2011)

I know, I know, I *should* be watching all eighty episodes of Game of Thrones, but instead I just watched an exquisite, gentle, autobigraphical film about two twelve-year-old girls, Ellie and Thuy, both immigrants to America because their families left their home countries, Israel and Vietnam, due to war. A quiet character study, this film is intimate, real, and a bit quirky. The music is lovely. If you like this sort of human portrait story, I recommend this. I saw it on Kanopy, available through the public library.

A super sweet remembrance of a friendship between immigrants, one girl from Israel (Noa Rotstein), and the other from Vietnam (Dalena Le). It visits a lot of the topics you'd expect, e.g. the difficulty of learning a new language, the cruelty of other girls towards an outsider, and the trials and tribulations of friendship. It gets a little saccharine when the soundtrack is cued at emotional moments, but it's always heartfelt. One of my favorite moments was when we hear the teacher's voice from the perspective of the girl, completely garbled, because she hasn't learned enough English yet - and then the observation that "Maps in America cut Asia in half so that their country is at the center of the world." The ending with footage of the real people 30 years afterwards is pretty cool too, as was finding out that Thuy really did stand out on the doorstep for two hours. A gentle and touching work from Ela Their, who also plays Ellie's mom.

After watching the first few minutes of this film, I was quite encouraged that it would turn out to be quite interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately, I turned out to be wrong.

The film seems to cover a very short period of time. It begins in summer (judging by how people are dressed) and ends in summer, all while school is in session.

It is basically, the story of a young (12-year-old) Israeli girl who moves to the US. She learns to speak English over the course of the film. She does not seem to change very much (other than learning to speak English) in the story.

The story is, as the summaries explain, the friendship between two non-native American girls in an American school.

I didn't feel there was anything particularly interesting about their story, or that it was told in a particularly interesting way. The promise of the first few minutes was, for me, never fulfilled.

Typical ignorant, mangecake bullies bullying like always. Very compelling story told in a unique way. Loved it.

The lessons learned from childhood friendships apply to friendships between adults. In this simple yet profound story are thought provoking issues about expectations, disappointment, and forgiveness. It's also about alienation, loneliness and the difficulty of assimilation. This is the kind of film that stays with you long after you've seen it. There are no special effects, no sex, no violence and yet there wasn't one moment where I wasn't fully involved and totally absorbed. I know the acting was good because there wasn't one second that I was aware that they were acting. This is an excellent movie to watch with children or grandchildren.