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WE STRANGERS – Review by Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin , , , , , ,
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Filmmaker Anu Valia’s first feature, We Strangers is a subversive, darkly funny and bitter narrative commentary on socio-economic racial profiling.

The story centers on Ray, a young, intelligent, responsible. well-mannered Black woman who works as a for-hire house cleaner. She is diligent and thorough in her work. Her clients are well-to-do families, mostly White, who recommend her to each other, passing along her good services in the same way they’d share a recipe for pesto. So, Ray goes from one home well appointed home to another, vacuuming, organizing closets, sanitizing toilets, changing linens, polishing pots, cleaning windows and mirrors.

With each client and in every home, Ray quietly witnesses and even encounters her employers’ dysfunctional behavior. She tolerates — or sometimes takes advantage of — their preconceived, stereotypical, and very biased notions about her persona and abilities. She is for all an exotic entity — clearly because she is Black. Her clients aren’t aware of their racism. In fact, they are absolutely clueless. And their behavior towards Ray, based on their assumptions, are way out of line — that she’s the mistress of one of her clients, that she’s a psychic medium with powers to communicate with the dead, that she craves the clothes that a client is purging from her wardrobe. Continue reading on CINEMA CITIZEN.

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).