My English Cousin review – charming look at a life in limbo

Here is a documentary in which one family member profiles another: Algerian-Swiss filmmaker Karim Sayad has chosen his own cousin, Fahed, as his subject, in a film of cultural dissonance and displacement. As a portrait of a lost soul it's intriguing and watchable, but My English Cousin is also frustratingly lacking in finer detail – we want to know more, but the film refuses to give us the required sustenance so that we might arrive at any real conclusions.

Fahed works in a kebab shop and also has two jobs working in factories. His life hasn't turned out how he expected, having moved from Algeria seventeen years previous, where he lived a stint on the streets before finding a job. Now he is living a monotonous, unadventurous life in the grey port town of Grimsby, following a split from his wife. Back in Algeria, his mother beckons him home, and so Fahed begins to wonder: should I return?

The central conflict is ostensibly that Fahed, having spent so much time in England, has little in common with his country of birth – his aunty even tells him he no longer has the “mentality” for Africa. But England is disappointing, a dead end, with little prospect to offer a man in Fahed's position. The only thing that seems to bring Fahed any joy is going to the pub with his other middle-aged friends, who double as housemates.

But then we also begin to wonder if it's really the sense of cultural displacement that's holding Fahed back or just his own lack of decisiveness. He actually seems more content living in limbo and drinking with friends than anything else we see. As the film follows Fahed back and forth between Algeria and Grimsby, he seems incapable of committing to anything; he proposes ideas for marriage, for business, but never follows through.

The title is, of course, somewhat ironic, in that it probes the very idea of “Englishness.” Fahed is a likeable if aloof subject, and Sayad is obviously very fond of his cousin – so much that he won't ruffle his feathers in ways a non-family member might be inclined, perhaps to the detriment of the film. I'm not quite sure the documentary does justice to the story it's telling, but it is a very charming portrait in its own way, mostly interesting as a study of somebody who has found themselves stuck in the unfulfilling repetitiveness of the daily grind.

My English Cousin is now available to stream on True Story.