Aisha, the film about her life, is a depressing and heart-wrenching experience that makes you feel like a hollow shell, anxious for Aisha’s safety and restless with the condition of today’s migrants. In contrast, the actor does a wonderful job portraying the constant dread of having no structure to your life. It tends to show immigrants their enemies in an unfavorable light as if they did not have pity. But one cannot ignore the horrible conditions in which people are forced to leave their homes.
Aisha (Wright) cheers and even waves in support of the dance group of the refugees’ center until it is roughly disbanded by the security personnel. American Manning (Stuart Graham), a vile center manager scolds people for not clenching their ticket properly. Just like Aisha had experienced after she tried to get her letters. He had so many excuses, but when the European guard refused to believe him, he showed her the scarf. While all this abuse is going on, a shy but tall (Josh O’Connor), a former convict who is looking for a position in security overhears everything.
Consequently, she arrives too late to catch her bus. The salon manager has some complaints concerning Aisha’s tardiness. Aisha is reminded that the situation is not so bad since at least she has been issued with a permit to work. Her mother, Moraya, speaks to her on the phone and she says that she dreads going for the asylum interview. Aisha has been waiting since two years to be able to speak up for herself. Moraya advises Aisha on what she should say about the events that preceded her arrival to America. That is not something she can conceal from her; they are just as she is.
Conor therefore sees Aisha at the bus stop the next morning. Both of them are well aware of how much pain they’ve caused each other. Conor does not go unnoticed later in the day when Ms. Manning refuses to let her use a microwave. There is no reason for Aisha to believe he provides halal food for Muslims. So instead of letting her the appropriate way, Conor decides to break the law. Aisha is grateful for his generosity but there was no chance of her explaining why she popped in from Nigeria. The subsequent day comes along with the ominous warning. Cutting up Aisha is absolutely unacceptable to Manning because she considers it insubordinate behavior.
This is how Aisha went through the prolonged and exhausting asylum process with Outhal Irish queers, Aith.However, the courts have never attended to any of her requests as such in a special way. A woman seeking refugee status to the system is just another nuisance that seeks a scrap of leave after completing the formalities. Apparently, all those who viewed Bergman’s ideas in Exile Bloomsday’s people avoid the cliches of red tape. Writer and the director of the picture, Frank Berry did not allow the format of the film to slip into melodrama. Aisha’s interviewers do not suffer from the lack of empathy nor the awareness of the gravity of her plight.
Aisha has still not recovered sufficiently to stoically narrate how she was tormented. So, it is much easier to make attacks against her Ford corrupt and personal at the same time. Quite obviously, those scenes are deeply shocking in their brutality. In other words, her credibility depends on her maintaining decorum in such situations. Forced to endure this humiliation on display to the public gaze, she is re-victimized in her desperate effort to escape the nightmare of one horror. Wright desperately fights to maintain her composure through everything, though that isn’t really easy.
Aisha’s dignity, which can never be said to be unassailable, has all along being held in suspension. More pain is brewing and so will the flow of tears.
It is Berry who, throughout the movie, uses long tracking shots so that Aisha is central in the picture. In his own words, the intention is to keep the audience aware of her movements in space. This a disquieting technique, which however, helps in portraying her feelings of estrangement rather well. Aisha is a woman on the verge of being blown with the winds of fate. She has little ability to influence the decision of any sort. As one can guess, this becomes quite infuriating when absolutely nothing can be done to improve a situation other than turning away and leaving such spiteful conditions. What can she do or say to prevent paternalistic bullying? Aisha’s subject of violence, anger, worries and discontent is kept for too long until reaches such an edge where come out with violent agony. One can coax a person to the very edge, down to their knees but such persistence is going to require unfathomable bravery.
Aisha will not let herself be weak, although she longs for affection and tenderness. Conor can’t help but get drawn to Aisha’s sweetness. His motives derive from the realization of what simply being lost means. Their chemistry is such that they cannot stay apart. Little by little, as Aisha conquers her fears and decides it is time to narrate her side, some aspects concerning him also come up. There was so much that was left between both of them especially after all those years. Aisha and Aidan creatively work together and have been asleep everywhere where trust is built and broken and built again by each character. It was Joshua O’Connor who delivered a remarkable empathetic performance in a rather light supporting role.
However, a knotted question comes forth that runs through the core of the contentious immigration issue – should Ireland, or any other country’, use its scant resources on people who come illegally? Is it just the morality of caring about refugees while indigenous people would also benefit from such help? For Berry, duty never sways and opposes dissenters in bad terms. There’s a point where the film bends a bit too much towards the imbalance in the beauty of the narrative. For that reason, not such disagreements are the cause of uncontrolled xenophobia and or sadism.
The tone of Aisha’s story is, however, unflinching and direct. According to Barry, it is a win-win situation. There are some, however, who may be disappointed but Aisha’s story has more to it. In between the black and white borders are displaced people who wish for better yet have no choice but to stride on.
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