When I first saw the trailer for this film, I had two immediate reactions to it: Feeling like I had seen the whole film already just from the trailer, and that the film was going to be a lot if that was even remotely accurate. It’s a coming-of-age survival story, it’s a romance, it’s a parable on the Other, it’s about prejudice, and it’s also a courtroom murder mystery; even at two hours long, this is already looking overstuffed. And indeed, there’s a lot going on here… but that only makes it even more astounding that it ends up as insubstantial as it does.
