Milk and Honey

Another in a series of immigrant culture shock dramas tells the old familiar story in a Jamaican accent, and takes a more serious (than expected) approach to the material. Co-writer Trevor Rhone is regarded in his own country as the West Indian equivalent of Neil Simon or Sam Shepard, and while it's an unlikely comparison a little of each can perhaps be seen in his story of a proud but penniless Jamaican woman seeking employment as a foreign domestic in Toronto, only to find it not a land of milk and honey but of compromise and diminished expectations. A troubled reunion with her estranged young son calls down the wrath of immigration officials (always the villain in this type of story), changing what began as a fish-out-of-water drama into a tense and sometimes clever escape and evasion thriller. Don't expect anything deep or complicated, just solid, unpretentious filmmaking marred only by an unnecessary happily-ever-after epilogue.