She is young, beautiful and a Muslim. But Yasmin (Renu Setna) has problems because she is also British and likes the Western way of life.
We first see her changing from her traditional clothes into jeans after visiting her widowed father. He wants her to marry a goatherd from Pakistan, but it hardly looks likely that the arranged union will be satisfactory.
Kenneth Glenaan's film, written by Simon "The Full Monty" Beaufoy, doesn't exactly come from the horse's mouth since neither is Muslim or Pakistani. But it honourably attempts to tell the truth about the dilemma facing many young immigrants today.
They are forced to choose before they are ready to do so, though it has to be said that many arranged marriages last longer than so-called love matches. You can grow into love, as someone tells Yasmin.
When the goatherd arrives from Pakistan it is clear that he is not up to the sparky Yasmin; he buys himself a goat, perhaps as solace. Meanwhile, 9/11 happens, Yasmin is ostracised at work, the goatherd is interned and life gets increasingly fraught.
Yasmin has to rethink her life. Will she be bound by the traditional values she still respects, or continue her Western lifestyle?
Setna doesn't put a foot wrong in this sincere, unpatronising and highly sympathetic though perhaps overly schematic film.
If there is a more major fault, it is that the ending isn't clear as to Yasmin's final state of mind. But perhaps she isn't either.
Yasmin screens tonight at Genesis, 93-95 Mile End Road, E1 (020 7780 2000), at 7pm.
Yasmin
Cert: 15
