For its few flaws, Sweetness in the Belly hits plenty of the right notes, featuring a breadth of insight possible only when a filmmaker truly knows the place the story is set.
This is a well-crafted, Bechdel-passing film that prioritizes an intersectional female friendship, yet Lilly remains nothing but our Trojan horse into the 1980s Ethiopian refugee crisis.
Fanning acquits herself, but Amina’s story as a single mother of two and a survivor of brutal sexual violence is the far more necessary story to tell. A main romantic subplot is slighter still.
There’s a floridly sentimental heart fluttering beneath its tastefully solemn surface, but at times, you can’t help wishing the film would give in to its more expressive impulses.