Om Sara : Recensioner :: Wings of Glass One ninth of the Swedish population consists of immigrants. This is the story of an Iranian family. Nazli, 18, was born in Sweden and wants to be Swedish. She wears short skirts and tight tops, has a tattoo, likes to ride a motorbike and call herself by a Swedish name, Sara. Her elder and larger sister, Mahin, is more comfortable with her Muslim roots and gladly accepts an arranged marriage to dweeby-looking Hassan. Nazli is offered her cousin, the good-looking and violently sexist Hamid, but she has no intention of marrying him. Finding it hard to get a job, a fact she attributes to being Iranian, Nazli accepts Hamid’s offer of work in his video store, with disastrous consequences. However, the job also brings her into contact with 20-year-old Swedish youth, Johan, with whom she falls in love. Despite giving up a successful acting career in Iran, so as to raise his children in Sweden, Abbas, the girls’s father, is unwilling to allow Nazli to become a true Swede. Things come to a head at Mahin’s wedding and Nazli leaves to move in with Johan. This is an excellently observed, positive film, which left this reviewer weeping with emotion. The father/daughter relationship between Abbas and Nazli is beautifully portrayed. Abbas is not a despotic dictator, like the father in East Is East, and although Nazli is a typical headstrong teenager, she is also thoughtful and deeply concerned about her father. There are strong comic moments, including a bungled heist at the video store, a fashionable accessory to any film these days, and some innocent exchanges between the young lovers. There is also a realistic, and consequently disturbing, attempted rape scene, which is likely to make most women in the audience feel sick. The characters are well-defined and presented, in particular the feisty Nazli (Sara Sommerfeld), although Muslim men come out extremely badly, being either violent and sexist or weak and feeble-minded, unlike the level-headed, considerate Johan. Wings Of Glass is the debut feature by Reza Bagher, a first generation Swede. If there is criticism to be leveled at his film it is that the plot may be a little predictable and the ending too neatly tied up. Essentially a feel-good movie, it provides a positive message about integration and cultural differences. Review by Kirsty Walker © 2001 www.iofilm.co.uk and its contributors All rights reserved :: Tillbaka ::