When the charming doctor Aziz tries to strike up a conversation with Lilly Abdal, he concludes that she “doesn’t make things easy.” It is also difficult for the viewer to penetrate into the always sullen looking protagonist of Sweetness in the Belly.
Lilly is quite a complex and unusual character: her British hippie parents left her in Morocco in the 1960s with an acclaimed Sufi master, where she was raised as a Quranic specialist and devout Muslim. Later, she is sent to the holy city of Hara in Ethiopia. When Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is overthrown, Lilly, like millions of others, must flee the violence.
Sweetness in the Belly begins when Lilly, an uprooted refugee, arrives in 1970s London. Her Quran knowledge is of little use to her and other refugees look down on her because she has privileges through her British passport. If she helps the recently given refugee Amina, she is still included in the migrant community. The film thus offers a poignant look at the hardships and traumas of refugee women.
The film received some criticism online. Lilly was supposed to be a character who has been “whitewashed”: a black refugee played by the white Dakota Fanning. A misunderstanding, also in Camilla Gibb’s book on which the film is based, Lilly is white. Yet for various reasons you wonder why she is the main character of this film. Her principled and rigid behavior makes her a rather unappealing character. The many flashbacks that go into her extraordinary life could have explained Lilly’s way of thinking, but are mainly used for historical interpretation. The flashbacks bring up a lot of loose ends. For example, a failed female circumcision in Ethiopia comes along very casually.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of October 6, 2021