Two Sisters Who Are Like Twins Go Vastly Different Ways in ‘You Resemble Me’ (Movie Review)
You Resemble Me
Rating: 8/10
Director: Dina Amer
Writers: Dina Amer and Omar Mullick
Style: Family Drama
Time: 91 minutes
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u1SgUDL8xQ
Review by Mike Szymanski
Many reviewers may mischaracterize this fine piece of filmmaking as a pseudo-documentary about the making of a terrorist. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is a family story, about two very close sisters who have irresponsible parenting, and it details the troubles they go through while growing up. They get separated, they become very different people, but they’ve always resembled each other, and in many ways, we will all resemble the troubled person that Hasna becomes when everything seems lost.
This is based on Hasna Air Boulahcen who was known as the first female suicide bomber in Europe after she died in a blast in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis a few days after the attack at the Bataclan Concert Hall. The film is in French and uses authentic locations in a semi-fictionalized version of this true story.
The director and co-writer Dina Amer feels responsible for being one of the journalists who dubbed Hasna the first female suicide bomber when the news first broke. Now, Amer sets the record straight, and even plays one of Hasna’s personas as an adult.
It’s a haunting, human, lovely story told in a straightforward, non-judgmental way. How did this party girl known as the “French cowgirl” become associated with a terrorist and get blown up in a violent explosion? The answers may not always be clear, but the story of the journey is certainly compelling.
The story begins with Hasna giving her younger sister Mariam a birthday present of the same dress that she is wearing. The dress was obviously stolen because it has a hole where the anti-theft detector was placed and then cut out. They have a happy life, except when they are home and have to tiptoe around to keep from waking up their abusive mother.
The mother is a tyrant, and when their brother gives Mariam more birthday presents, the mother gathers it all up and then threatens to take the girl’s dress so she can sell it for rent money.
The girls run away from home (again) and finally get picked up by the police after creating some mischief, and they are separated. In a heart-wrenching moment, the two sisters are literally pulled apart with chilling screams of protest.
Hasna is put into a foster home of white parents with a snooty daughter. Even from the first moment Hasna knows it’s not going to work out. The foster mother makes her eat pork, which causes the girl to throw up. She insists on making her keep her elbows off the table, and pushes her to pronounce their names correctly. Hasna runs away.
Skip about a decade and Hasna has become quite a different, but still rebellious, person. The older Hasna turns tricks, takes drugs and wears a cowboy hat. She is played by three different women, including director Dina Amer who resembles the real-life Hasna, according to the woman’s mother.
Amer says, “As a Muslim Egyptian woman living in the West, I’ve struggled to reconcile pieces of my identity that feel contradictory. I am a woman who has spent the majority of my life praying discreetly in public spaces (airports are the hardest). And yet I don’t look like what most of society envisions as a Muslim woman. I don’t wear a hijab and I love Cardi B.”
She explores the fractured identities of Hasna and shows how any one of us could fall into these difficult choices that are difficult, unpleasant and potentially disastrous.
“There are so many people who resemble the main character, Hasna,” Amer says. “Many people desperately seek a sense of identity, family, direction, and love in all the wrong places, yet some, like Hasna, grab our attention in the worst way when their search goes wrong.”
After conducting more than 360 hours of interviews and spending time working with men at Riker’s Island Prison, Amer said she understood the situation Hasna was in, and could see herself in that same possible position. That’s how the title “You Resemble Me” came about.
Amer premiered the film at the Venice Film Festival in 2021. It is executive produced by Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Riz Ahmed and Alma Har’el.
The movie actually takes place in two parts. The girls who are inseparable are played by real-life sisters Lorenza Grimaudo as Hasna and Ilona Grimaudo as Mariam. They are wonderful together and Lorenza shows the zest for life that we later see in the adult Hasna, while Ilona has the shyness of the younger sister who needs constant protecting.
This part of the film is carefree and loving, except when it comes to their parenting. The world seems against these children, but they do have each other.
The adult Hasna characters portray different parts of her life, and don’t get mixed up when they don’t completely look like each other. Actresses Mouna Soualem and Sabrina Ouazani portray different pieces of the older Hasna, and director Amer takes on her own version of the character. As in the interviews, when people told the director/journalist different pieces of the puzzle of Hasna, so she portrays them as different actresses as she grows up and changes.
The part of her cousin, portraying an infamous terrorist, is played by Alexandre Going and many actors previously turned down the role because they feared for their safety.
The film already won many honors from festivals throughout the world, including the Aegean, Atlanta, Luxembourg, Phoenix and Hot Springs International Women’s Film festivals.
The film will be released this fall in the United States.
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