Amira & Sam

It may not be spring yet, but this sweet little gem of a movie is the perfect antidote to that lengthy stretch of grimy gray weather Austin endured a while back. While director Mullin’s debut feature – he also scripted and co-produced – is a relatively slight slice of cross-cultural love in the Big Apple, it more than makes up for that by being ingratiatingly charming, playful, and, above all, honest in its depiction of a budding albeit problematic romance between a recently returned army veteran and a thoroughly modern young Iraqi woman.

Martin Starr plays Sam in a tightly controlled manner that’s light years from his most famous role as the gangly Bill Haverchuck on the seminal television series Freaks and Geeks. Ramrod-straight and radiating the sort of quiet competence that comes from years in the military, Sam pays a visit to his old friend Bassam (Nakli), a former Iraqi translator for the army who somehow managed to secure safe passage to the U.S. post-war. While talking over old times, Sam meets cute with Bassam’s niece Amira (Shihabi, in a luminous, appealing performance). Initially bristling at Sam’s presence in their household – her brother was killed, accidentally, by U.S. troops during the war – Amira soon finds herself forced into tense cohabitation with Sam after she experiences a run-in with the NYPD, thus necessitating a place to hide out for a while. Slowly, tentatively, and yes, predictably, a romance begins to blossom between this unlikely pair.

A subplot involving Sam’s oily, hedge-funding cousin is tossed into the mix to drive the plot along, but it’s really not that necessary. The emotional interplay between Sam and Amira is more than enough to sustain audiences’ interest, and the story’s topical jabs at how American culture is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by pretty girls in hijabs lends the film a much-needed culture-clash gravitas.

Amira & Sam, which is being distributed by Austin-based Drafthouse Films, isn’t a perfect film. (Some of the incidentals seem forced into the story to drive the narrative from one plot point to the next.) But it is a film with an abundance of goodwill toward the displaced and a core belief that true love can, if not entirely overcome all odds, then at least even up the battle-scarred playing field.

See “Not Another Rom-Com,” Nov. 14, 2014, for an interview with writer/director Sean Mullin.