When the film pushes the droll humour of the situation, it actually serves to emphasise the internalised pain suffered by the various characters we follow. A sudden (and hilarious) reverse shot reveals a tightly packed room of male asylum seekers, and it channels the film’s central theme of an infantilising effect that comes naturally from a bureaucratic tier, and a polite but insidious fear of foreign cultures somehow sullying our own, far-from-passable social character. Helga (Sidse Babett Knudsen) gyrates to some music while her accomplice Boris (Kenneth Collard) slithers around her inappropriately. Sharrock sets out his absurd comic tone in the film’s opening scene in which two grotesque social workers enact a short theatrical scene intended to demonstrate traditional British etiquette. His communications with his parents, which allow him to wax nostalgic about happier times, take place in a decrepit phone box situated on the side of a dirt track in the middle of nowhere, and Sharrock has fun watching his fellow asylum seekers queue as they stand like statues as their disposable ponchos billow in the wind. The central protagonist is Omar (Amir El-Masry), a up-and-coming Oud maestro (which is a little like a lute) who has fled from Syria in a different direction to his parents, who have ended up in Istanbul, and his brother, who has decided to stay home and fight for the cause. Everything, including the whimsical locals, smacks of Father Ted’s own Craggy Island. It is, as the title suggests, a spartan landscape as an outstretched, existential waiting room, with those who have been posted there forced to sit tight and wait for an indeterminate amount of time for their applications to be processed. Healthcare in the area consists of a mobile hut and a timetable stating when some kind of medical professional might be heading along to assist. Its story unfurls on a far-flung Scottish island where the local population is scarce and local amenities are virtually non-existent. Ben Sharrock’s debut feature film Limbo makes the convincing case that this is simply not true.Īnd at the same time, the film takes place in a world that is a few increments displaced from gritty reality. A malevolent political wave, dead set on painting any/all incoming traffic as a blight on an already overburdened system, has managed to convince many that asylum seekers come to countries such as the UK on a carpet of rose petals and, upon arrival, are handed a wedge of banknotes to help them on their way. Ben Sharrock spins absurd comedy from torment suffered by those waiting for asylum to be granted.Ĭinema appears to have taken on a certain mantle when it comes to educating audiences about the dehumanising aspects that come from seeking asylum in a country that is not your own.
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