Jeg er din (I am yours) is Iram Haq's debut film. The Pakistani-Norwegian actor has been an actor on stage as well as in feature TV-films as well as cinema released films. The film is of course highly fluster by Haq's Pakistani upbringing, which makes sure this film is quite realistically in the storytelling. The film was chosen for several film festivals, and also Norwegian candidate for Oscars in 2014.
Mina is a young Norwegian Pakistani freelance actor and single mother living in Oslo with her 6 year old son Felix, and has a troubled relationship to her family. The mother is nagging her, and the rest if the family has difficult to understand she is still single, though they have tried to marry her away. She is looking for love and has relations to different men, as short real actions. Then Mina meets the Swedish film Jesper maker during a film festival in Oslo, she falls head over heals in love. But things doesn't turn out the way she hopes.
It an OK film, but due to the great overall quality to most Norwegian films recently, I must admit I had high hopes to this, as well. It's OK, but nothing more. I've read that the film is unconventional, but I can't say I got that feeling while watching. Maybe it's unconventional coming from a director with a Pakistani upbringing. When she is at casting interviews we see everything thee the eyes if the interviewers, and never get to see their faces. The film has a meta perspective, as both Mina and the film maker Jesper involves the film aspect of their every day life from time to time. A homage made to the animation film The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (Flåklypa Grand Prix) is a part of this during their meeting conversation.
Amrita Zachariah does a great role as Mina, in a fictional take, though loosely based upon the directors own experiences. Hand held camera, though not annoying. The film is maybe not filmed with a green filter, though it feels a gloomy dominated by a kind of green and blue. I'd like the film to have a more vibrant color pallet for my taste, especially because thus is a multicultural story. It's not obvious to my why this is worthy a nomination, since there where far more interesting films made that could have been better contenders. The acting is good, but the film is slow, and maybe even a big boring at times. This is when the film loses pace, which happens every 10 minutes. Therefore this will probably not be to everybody's liking.
It's an every day story about the difficulty in being brought up in two so diverse cultures, and about having different expectations to what life and relations are to be. Expectations from family and her kids father is difficult to combine with her life as an actor and her expectations to find love around the next corner. What she finds us more if the same. The most interesting parts of the film is the ones with the family. The tension runs high. A well depicted every day story, but when we from time to time feel tension rids, it's over in the next moment. Maybe more true to real life, bug still not the way to make everyone drawn into the film. I'm sorry to say that the film failed to make me very engaged in Mina's life, despite the character building and great acting.
