I watched 'Your beauty is worth nothing...' at an open air event yesterday. Starting at 9 pm, you could hear crickets chirping, the traffic was still noticeable, every now and then you saw a plane flying above your head and the moonlight was getting stronger and stronger. Reaching halftime, the crickets had stopped, the traffic had decreased and the guy next to me had fallen asleep. Yes, it might have been due to his age, but the one thing which made him cringe was his Nokia ring tone set to volume 10, rather than a scene from the movie.
What started as a pleasant and promising movie night eventually turned out to be just a pleasant night outside, where I was more fascinated by the movie screen swaying to and fro due to a welcome breeze. I did consider the plot to have potential. You are being confronted with acceptance, conflicts, desire and dreams all swirling around the main topic of immigration. Furthermore, the movie takes place in the city I grew up in, which made it more interesting to me.
The movie tries to depict immigration from a schoolboys point of view, who had just arrived with his family to a foreign city six months ago. He struggles at home and in school. His older brother, the second main story line of the movie, once tells him he is too much of a dreamer and he should act rather than stand aside. That is what the movie tries to capture you with. Dream sequences versus reality. There are a couple of them; overexposed, slow motion dream clips underlined with heartbreaking music. It did work the first time, but in the end it was too much for me. It just tried too hard to deliver a certain mood. As far as I can imagine how an immigrant schoolboys life must be, I'd say the movie is not unrealistic; maybe the viewer was supposed to get the impression of immigration being a long-term goal on different levels, but what you are being served is just half cooked; I doubt a longer runtime than the rather short 86 minutes would have changed the way how I felt when leaving, namely unsatisfied and empty, similar to how the boy must have felt.
