Sand Dollars

The main takeaway that I got from watching Sand Dollars is that The Dominican Republic seems like a lovely place to visit.

Sand Dollars is about Anne, a French citizen living in The Dominican Republic. Anne is in love with a young prostitute named Noeli whose company she pays for. Noeli’s dream is to leave The Dominican Republic and move to Europe. Blinded by her affection for Noeli, Anne takes several steps to help her achieve this goal despite Noeli’s reciprocation of these affections to be questionable.

Sand Dollars is a movie where its setting- The Dominican Republic has more character than any of the people in the movie. There is time and a great deal of love put into shooting various locations on this beautiful island. There’s the rich, beach side houses where Anne and other rich immigrants live, the bustling city night life and the poorer areas of the island where Noeli and her pimp/boyfriend make their home.

Sand Dollars really makes use of its country of origin. Such character is given to the country and there seems to be such passion from the filmmakers for portraying their country.

This movie is not a love story. I am not particularly invested in Anne and Noeli’s relationship but I don’t think I’m supposed to be. After all, Noeli isn’t either. Instead, the relationship is based on Anne’s loneliness and Noeli’s need. But that creates an uphill battle for me to be invested in the characters individually and I don’t think they succeeded.

As characters, Anne and Noeli lack personality. The only things I really know about them as people are that Anne is rich and old and that Noeli is young, poor and beautiful. I didn’t care about the relationship between these two characters nor did I care about them individually.

I spent 80 minutes of this movie feeling nothing. During the last ten minutes I did have a mild emotion or two but it was too little too late.

The end scene of Sand Dollars ends up being the best one; a melancholy shot of Anne walking alone through the bustling nightlife of the Dominican Republic, alone and out-of-place. It’s a beautiful shot that comes far too late in the film to change my opinion of it.

The beautiful location and cinematography that took advantage of such is the MVP in Sand Dollars. While it’s a lovely film to look at though, the script is scant, the characters uninteresting and the ending is far more heterosexual than would be my preference. I don’t particularly recommend this movie but I’m not going to recommend against seeing it either. There are better WLW films, there are worse WLW films. Sand Dollars falls pretty much in the middle of the road.

Overall rating: 6/10

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