Amer isn’t defending or celebrating that choice, to be sure, but is striving to find some answer for the roads sometimes taken.
Seeing her own experiences in some of Hasna’s struggles, and hoping that audiences may recognize or even empathize with them further underscores the film’s title “You Resemble Me.”
The long road to the film’s riveting conclusion is deliberate. A former journalist, Amer wants to provide some understanding and depth in contrast to sensational clickbait headlines of a never-ending news cycle.
Thus she began by conducting 300 hours of interviews with people familiar with the actual Hansa, some of whom also end up in the film. But rather than the majority of documentaries that insert re-enactments; hers is a scripted, beautifully shot theatrical film with the occasional jolts of documentary reality.
Much of the success of the storytelling is due to the actress Mouna Soualem, very expressive in portraying a woman who is alternately wounded, defiant, exuberant, mournful and determined. Amer takes a flight of fancy, though, in casting other women in the same role — to show how others see Hasna — as a lover, a saintly wife or a rebel (Amer herself is one of these roles). It’s a bit confusing at first, but is another example of the bold risk-taking she’s doing.
Lorenza Grimaudo and Ilonna Grimaudo are well cast as the young sisters — perhaps because they’re sisters already. It’s through their antics that draws the viewer into the story in the first place. The other standout in the cast is Alexandre Gonin as the cousin who draws her in.
No less than Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Riz Ahmed and Abigail Disney all signed on as executive producers for the film because they responded to the importance and power of the storytelling and what it has to say about rage and 21st Century assimilation.