Letita Wright's Aisha is disturbing, but not haunting

What is troublin’ Aisha Osagie in Dublin? Aisha is a fearless relentless Nigerian refugee seeking permanent asylum in Ireland. But the red, or shall dread, tapism? How does one seek a home in a country that puts hundreds of hurdles in your way? How do you repeat your past history to the seemingly kind authorities over and over again, without once floundering over the details?

It’s like walking on landmines where the explosives are relocated each time.

Aisha directed by Frank Berry, streaming on MUBI, is resoundingly successful in depicting the monstrous monotony and imminent dangers of a mulish bureaucracy where any and everything Aisha says can be held against her.

Where it fails is in drawing us into her horrific crisis. A part of the blame must go to Letitia Wright, a very accomplished actress who plays Aisha as an obstinate self-reliant woman who won’t let her migrant situation whittle down her courage and self-respect. All this is fine. But Aisha often comes across as unreasonable in her demands and temper tantrums. She has a work permit, she works in a beauty parlour in Dublin and heads to her sleeping quarters in the night where she brings her own food because the in-house meat is not done in the ‘halaal’ way.

From her point of view, her self-provision of halaal meat is reasonable. But for the authorities, it is one more reason why migrants are seen as troublemakers. Aisha won’t bend, nor will she blend. The adoptive country has to mould itself according to her convenience. This is the problem that afflicts all migrants. They cannot escape the ghetto mindset.

To writer-director Frank Berry’s credit, he doesn’t take sides, doesn’t offer any solution, doesn’t wag an accusing finger at either side of this migration battle line. For, battle it is. And one that the Aishas of the world are likely to lose as countries which were once welcoming have now closed ranks against what they see as a kind of invasion.

Aisha has some beautiful moments of introspection especially when the protagonist recalls her traumatic life back home in Nigeria. Tom Comerford’s cinematography is like a silent spectator examining and capturing the developments as quietly and vividly as possible.

Letitia Wright plays Aisha with a pounding sense of self-worth. She is down and out, but nobody would dare to kick her. As the quaintly supportive Irish security guard Josh O’Connor has changed his entire look, scruffy and stubbled and that impressive crewcut, he is all set to go. But the plot gives him nowhere to go. After a point, his unconditional support for Aisha begins to seem not only unreasonable but also incomprehensible.

The end is what they call ‘open’. It is frustratingly inconclusive making us feel as though we’ve watched a documentary which forgot to shoot its final moments.

For all its shortcomings, Aisha is compelling in its migratory pitch. It tells of a refugee’s struggle with honesty and tenderness. The missing components are what they are: chasms in a seriously damaged pastiche.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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