Ours and others Once again, the filmmakers of “Dear Alice” exploit Alejandro González Iñárritu’s favorite trick, weaving five different characters into one knot. This time in order to remind about tolerance, or rather about its lack in a society that proclaimed itself tolerant and progressive.
Having invited guests from the south and south-east for temporary or permanent residence, the Swedes suddenly realized that they were in a hurry because their small cozy country was too small for the flow of migrants that flooded there in the last couple of decades. Relaxed with life, Europeans have become weaned from the need to fight for a place in the sun, and now the venerable TV presenter, who twenty years ago stood at the origins of today’s entertainment television, turns out to be unclaimed in a modern multicultural society, where a young “Brazy Turk”, a new idol of a multinational viewer, is taken in his place. However, this dismissal is only one of the few troubles befell the main characters of the film “Dear Alice”.
Not the most successful day in the lives of the five main characters of the film inexorably leads them towards their own fate. She will persistently push the characters against each other, so that in the final at one point met the employee of the social service Moses Said, a black citizen of Sweden, whose father lives in Uganda; his wife Karin Said, defending in court a famous actor by the name of Håkan, repeatedly caught driving under the influence; the famous actor Håkan himself; the already mentioned dismissed TV presenter Bosse and an immigrant from Gambia Francis Namassi, owner of a bankrupt store.
It seems that Karim Othman, the film’s director, is trying to instill in the citizens of the prosperous West a sense of guilt for their petty problems, which cannot be compared with the misfortunes that people in the Third World face every day. While a successful lawyer Karin is thinking about where to get money for the next installment for a new huge house, her father-in-law may lose his leg in Uganda, and very close, somewhere on the next street, in order not to die of hunger and hold out for a couple of days, Frances, who immigrated from the Gambia, gives the gold watch to the pawnshop left by his father. Here they face in a dispute for a place in the parking lot of a bank Moses Said, distraught with concern for his father in need of expensive medicines, and blinded by jealousy fired TV presenter Bosse. Each of them thinks that his problem is the most important, but the director persistently pushes the viewer to the idea that Europeans have no idea about the real troubles.
It is when Moses is unable to send money to his sick father because he is the same name as a terrorist suspect, or when Francis, in desperation, throws goods into the bucket from his store, ruined due to the strict control of the security services, behind the scenes begins to sound piercing, trembling music. While the well-kept Swedes, "living behind an orgy, having a bath and a warm clozet," look ridiculous with their suspicion of strangers and far-fetched problems.
And this one-sided coverage of the issue of interethnic relations, dividing the world into black and white, slightly greases the impression of a good artistic plan of the film “Dear Alice”, making it propaganda and devoid of objectivity. Of course, Karim Othman, who was born in Uganda, wants to convince the viewer of the good intentions of all his fellow tribesmen, but the recent unrest of migrants in Sweden or the UK makes you doubt the truth of this point of view, which, however, does not prevent this film from being a beautiful work of modern cinema.