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 Summerpushes 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 Summerpaints 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
The Wrap reports that Patrick Stewart will play a white supremacist in Green Room, a thriller which sounds all kinds of awesome. First of all, it will reunite the Fright Night remake's Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, while the story centers on a punk rock band trapped in a secluded venue after stumbling upon a horrific act of violence, and must fight for their lives against a gang of white power skinheads intent on eliminating all witnesses. The peaceful Professor Xavier as a hateful white supremacist? Now that's just plain cool. Yelchin will play the band's leader while Poots is a skinhead who takes a stand against her racist friends. 
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