Sweetness in the Belly (2019)

Directed by: Zeresenay Mehari | 110 minutes | drama | Actors: Dakota Fanning, Wunmi Mosaku, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Zeritu Kebede, Nuhamin Eskete, Edelwork Tassew, Kunal Nayyar, Gavin Drea, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Estad Tewfik Yusuf Mohamed, Rafael Goncalves, Denis Conway, Molly McCann

Sweetness in the Belly is about the young woman Lily (Dakota Fanning). As the only white woman among black refugees from Ethiopia, she stands out. Due to the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, countless women and children fled to England in the hope of finding a safe haven. Lily’s western appearance doesn’t do her any harm. In the foreseeable future she will have a British passport and a house, which other fellow sufferers will have to wait for months. But Lily doesn’t feel at home. With flashbacks, Sweetness in the Belly, based on Camilla Gibb’s book of the same name, illustrates Lily’s unusual childhood.

Lily is the daughter of British-Irish expats, who traveled through Africa as hippies/nomads in the 1960s. When she was eight, her parents left her at a Sufi shrine. Not on purpose, but for reasons inexplicable to the girl, they never return. The spiritual guide The Great Abdal takes her under his wing and raises her. Lily spends her time studying the Quran. She grows up to be a devout Muslim.

When she is older she moves to Ethiopia, where she works for Nouria and her daughter Bortucan. Because Bortucan is a victim of female genital mutilation (a horrific fact that the film seems to get over too easily, but that is probably due to the western perspective), she meets Doctor Aziz, who is immediately interested in her. Slowly something beautiful grows between the two, but then the communist-socialist Derg seizes power and Ethiopia is no longer safe. Lily flees to England.

Although the source material is fascinating, the conversion to the silver screen has not proved so successful. That largely depends on the screenplay. Lilly just isn’t a captivating character. She is flat and the viewer cannot get a grip on her. The flashbacks don’t help. You would expect that it must be a traumatic experience for a child to suddenly lose your parents in a strange environment and to be dependent on a stranger, but that is never made tangible. It is presented as fact. Her initial reluctance towards Aziz and the sudden turn towards love also seems forced. In short: Lily never really comes to life.

Sweetness in the Belly revives as Amina (Wunmi Mosaku) and her son enter the picture. Amina gives birth in the stairwell of Lily’s flat and Lily takes in the woman and her children. Amina plans to start an agency where refugees can get help finding their missing loved ones in Africa. Amina’s backstory is at least as captivating as Lily’s. And Kunal Nayyar (Raj from “The Big Bang Theory”) as the bookish doctor in the hospital where Lily works, injects the film with energy and charm. However, this is not enough to make ‘Sweetness in the Belly’ a successful book adaptation.