A woman stands in a room as a nearby man presses a button on a small boombox.
Ever so gently, the woman, Helga (Sidse Babett-Knudsen), begins to sway to the sounds of Hot Chocolate’s 1982 song “It Started With a Kiss.” As her dancing becomes freer, the man, Boris (Kenneth Collard), moves in to dance with her.
He moves closer and closer, and we see that a few rows of men are observing the pair from several feet away.
I think it’s fine. You could also do this I suppose: We cut back to the onlookers, most of whom just stare back emotionless, except for one, who puts his face in his hands.
These are the tone-setting opening minutes of ‘Limbo,” an offbeat, sometimes humorous and occasionally heartbreaking film about the refugee experience that is opening in select theaters this week.
The asylum seekers, we soon learn, are in a poorly conceived cultural-awareness class on a remote Scottish island.
The second film from Scottish filmmaker Ben Sharrock (“Pikadero”) is a bit uneven, but the purposefully slow affair boasts effective comedic moments that balance those that are more poignant.
“Limbo” follows four men seeking to be granted asylum from the United Kingdom, none of whom is allowed to work while he waits. Thus, flatmates Omar (Amir El-Masry), Farhad (Vikash Bhai), Wasef (Ola Orebiyi) and Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) sleepwalk through a mundane existence that includes binging a “Friends” box set. (The passionate argument between Wasef and Abedi about the nature of Ross and Rachel’s “break” is a lot of fun.)
“Limbo” ultimately centers around Omar, a promising young musician who has escaped a dangerous life in Syria. While his parents fled to Turkey, his estranged brother, Nabil (Kais Nashif), stayed to fight for a cause. Omar makes multiple trips to a remote phone booth on the island to call his mother, who worries for the whole family and especially wants Omar to talk to Nabil — that is if the latter still is alive.
Omar experiences racism from a group of young locals, who, after saying he’d better not be a terrorist — “Don’t, (expletive) like, blow up (expletive) or rape anyone, right?” a young man says to him — give him a lift.
He also learns a lesson when he asks the owner of a grocery store if he is Pakistani by using a term to which the man objects.
Early on in “Limbo,” Omar wears a plaster cast on one of his hands, making it impossible to play his oud, a guitar-like instrument. However, his closest friend in the flat, mild-mannered Afghan Farhad — who begins to refer to himself as Omar’s “agent slash manager” — plans for Omar to perform a concert for the locals and his fellow refugees.
But will Omar even want to play when he is physically able?
As a writer, Sharrock — who during film school in 2013 shot a short film at the refugee camps in southern Algeria — eschews any grand statements about the experience of asylum seekers. At the risk of stating the obvious given the film’s title, he mainly seeks to show the difficulty in waiting for what can be years for an answer from the government as refugees reside in this in-between realm.
He crafts some nice scenes as a director. And while we don’t love his decision to present most of the film in the square-ish four-by-three aspect ratio, he has a better artistic argument for doing so than did the namesake director of recent high-profile HBO Max release “Zack Snyder’s Justice League.”
Sharrock stumbles a bit as he tries to take the film’s tone from mildly absurd to somberly dramatic, but it’s a tall task and he mostly accomplishes it.
He benefits from the acting work of Egyptian actor El-Masry (“Rosewater,” “The Night Manager”), whose effective performance stretches beyond the lines he’s asked to deliver. Omar’s sadness quietly pours out of him constantly
Bhai’s performance also is laudable, his work helping a late scene pertaining to the character deliver the intended impact.
You wish “Limbo” overall was a bit more impactful, but it does stay with you for a while after the end credits roll.
“Limbo” is rated R for language. Runtime: 1 hour, 44 minutes.
