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Australian migrant comedy, with its roots in pantomime and community theatre, has never quite emerged into a cinematic sub-genre in its own right. That said, you recognise it when you see it.
There are the first generation characters, who speak in thick accents, sometimes comically misreading the new country, other times offering surprising insights. Then there's the second generation, who straddle two cultures but are typically beset by an identity crisis.
At the more radical end of the spectrum — in Paul Fenech's TV shows like Fat Pizza, for example —the swirling tensions of race, class and generational change never resolve. Chaos reigns and the centre doesn't hold.
At the more conservative end, in films like They're a Weird Mob, a resolution always beckons. The new country is forgiven for its shortcomings, while the migrant's arduous journey results in a measure of contentment.
The Australian romantic comedy Ali's Wedding sits in this latter category, and it has something significant to say.
Based on the experiences of comic and lead actor Osamah Sami, an Iraqi refugee who arrived in Australia as a boy after several years in Iran, it begins with the title card: "A true story. Unfortunately."
The hint of embarrassment doesn't quite prepare you for what follows.
Ali is the son of a Muslim cleric (Don Hany), he hopes to become a doctor but after failing to get into medical school, he lies to his family and friends and starts attending class anyway. There, he pursues a young woman from the mosque, but not the same woman he's been pressured into engaging.
He ends up, like George Costanza, caught in his own web of lies, but instead of Seinfeld's absurdism, the film delivers a sentimental, occasionally funny melodrama with a difference.
Traditionally, Australian comedies about migrants — from Wogs Out of Work to Kingswood Country — have been obsessed with the tension between the outsider and the dominant culture.
Kingswood Country lasted five seasons — and jumped several sharks — while mining the antipathy between an Anglo bigot (Ross Higgins) and his Italian son in law (Lex Marinos), often referred to simply as "the wog".
In Ali's Wedding, Australia is a relatively unproblematic adopted country. Maybe it's wishful thinking, maybe it's a sign of our culture maturing — the SBS TV series The Family Law also downplays the idea of culture clash — but in Ali's world, things seem OK here.
In fact, the film suggests that whatever trials and tribulations await recently arrived communities, none are as bad as back home, and many troubles are self-inflicted.
Australian racism? It barely registers. His trio of best friends are an Anglo, Asian and fellow Arab.
Even a road rage incident passes almost innocuously, without so much as a xenophobic epithet or a "Go back to where you came from". Compare this to the film's childhood flashback, where Iranian men call Iraqi refugee boys "Arab dogs" and the contrast is stark.
Where there is cultural tension, it's within Ali's community.
His progressive father, who offers free counselling services from the back room of his modest brick and tile house and directs an annual satirical play about Saddam Hussein, faces a white-anting, humourless rival.
Ali, meanwhile, is at loggerheads with his mother, a vibrant Frances Duca, who disapproves of the girl he loves because she's from the wrong part of the Middle East and, worse still, born in Australia.
This is a sign of loose morals, she says, and in one of the film's more successful moments, Ali's younger sister calls out her reverse snobbery with the bitter observation that she too was "born here".
If the secret to universal appeal is creating a world rich in detail and specificity, Ali's Wedding has proven itself by winning the audience award at the Sydney Film Festival and best film last week at Western Australia's CinefestOz.
I'd hesitate to call it a sophisticated look at identity, and the complex, tonal shifts in the script written by Sami with Hacksaw Ridge screenwriter Andrew Knight are clearly a handful for director Jeffrey Walker, a TV maker working on the big screen for the first time.
But the film has charm. Its suburban locations are affectionately captured by veteran cinematographer Don McAlpine, and the performances of Helana Sawires and Maha Wilson as Ali's sweetheart and betrothed are moving portrayals of fierce courage in the face of the film's (mostly male) stupidity.
While a gender blind spot exists on the film's periphery — an unrepentant old bigamist with three completely veiled wives is not exactly taken to task — the faith it shows in its flawed characters is significant.
Ali's Wedding imagines how an Australian Muslim community might be able to resolve its own problems, without needing help from do-gooder outsiders, moralising pundits or politicians.
While this reflects a lack of confidence in the possibility of broader cross-cultural solidarity, it also has a more positive dimension.
At a time when Muslims tend to be absent from our screens bar in the most tragic and brutal scenarios, the idea that these characters have the compassion and courage to work through their significant issues autonomously is what drives the film's feel good energy.
Topics: comedy-film, romance-films, film-movies, arts-and-entertainment, melbourne-3000, vic, australia