Absolutely. Arsinée Khanjian, Atom Egoyan's missus and frequent collaborator, delivers one of the year's finest screen performances, not just in Canadian movie circles but in any country you care to pick, playing Sabah, a 40-year-old Syrian immigrant whose life is turned on its hijab-covered head when she falls for a WASP carpenter in Toronto. Better yet, the supporting cast of characters in Ruba Nadda's script isn't just a roster of conflicting opinions disguised as people, but instead a well-conceived group of individuals with credible things on their minds.

Since the family moved to Canada, Sabah has been the dutiful daughter, forsaking a career to care for her widowed mother in the family's comfortable home. Sabah's father was an antique furniture dealer, a business carried on and greatly expanded by his married son Majid (Jeff Seymour), who has assumed the role of family benefactor, or autocrat, depending on your point of view. Although Sabah manages the household's daily finances, she is accountable to Majid, who reviews her expenditures with what seems like an invariably disapproving eye.

For the sake of her health - physical, mental and emotional - Sabah has taken to swimming at a local community centre, which is where she meets Stephen (Shawn Doyle), when he inadvertently dries himself with her towel. As always, Sabah's hair is covered, this time by a bathing cap, but Khanjian, in one of many lovely little touches, acts as if she is stark naked and can't wait to disappear under Stephen's interested gaze. Naturally, romance is in the offing. And as you correctly imagine, the news isn�t well received at home.

The distributor's press notes quote Sabah's writer-director fairly extensively on her cultural perspective. Born in Montreal, Ruba Nadda is of Arabian descent. "From the very beginning of my filmmaking career" - Nadda is a prolific director of short films - "I wanted to show a completely new and different side to my culture, a side I was very familiar with but that the world rarely saw. The side that I wanted to show had nothing to do with terrorism, abuse or honour killings. I am sure all of those things exist around the world, but for me and my family and friends here in Toronto and the Middle East, we were sick of stereotypes. I wanted audiences to see another side to Middle Eastern culture. So I set out to tell a story about cross-cultural love, acceptance and the many challenges immigrant families face when they come to Canada. These struggles are often portrayed as a choice that must be made between preserving cultural traditions or accepting Western values. But it's actually much more complicated than that. Everyone, regardless of cultural background, always has to make judgments every day about how they make their own personal set of values fit with those of the society around them. Most people make exceptions from time to time. Making exceptions is not the same as giving up your culture. It is simply a part of living in a multicultural society like Canada."