When the mom goes back and takes the baby, Leila starts walking around the house but she’s not amazed anymore. The flashiness of the house has worn off, so she goes to her room and looks at her flag and picks up a family photograph. Staring at it, she starts crying. She calls her father and he doesn’t pick up. Her host mother knocks on the door and invites her to dinner. She wipes away her tears and comes down. Sitting at the dinner, she pushes food around her plate silently while everyone else talks and laughs. She stands up and everyone goes silent, then returns to their conversation. She excuses herself to go for a walk to take her mind off things. The family talks about how she is simply French for leaving. She hears them as she leaves and rolls her eyes.
Leila walks alone through the streets of SF. She sees a family laughing while having dinner. She walks through ethnic enclaves in SF (Chinatown, Little Italy, etc) and stares at them nostalgically, thinking of home as the sun sets. Then, she receives a call–it’s Tatiana. Tatiana wants to go out to meet a man in a salsa club. Leila is not in the mood but Tatiana insists.
Leila walks back home and goes straight to her room. She gets ready to go out, hearing the host family’s drunken laughter through the walls. She picks up her hair straightener and throws it in the trash. She decides on a more natural makeup look.
As Leila arrives at the Salsa club, Tatiana is already dancing and enjoying herself with a few different men and doesn’t even see Leila walk in. Leila looks around and finds a seat. A man comes up to her and invites her to dance. Leila says she doesn’t know how to salsa, but the man offers to teach her. She starts dancing and gets the hang of it immediately–the man is impressed. He asks her if she’s Latina and she stutters while trying to explain her heritage (French? Algerian?). He makes an innocent comment about her not being an American and she is devastated but tries not to show it.
Tatiana joins Leila and tells her she didn’t know that Leila danced salsa and Leila says she doesn’t. Another man asks Leila to dance but she has had enough of the club and leaves. We see her walking away in the dark, smoking a cigarette.
She goes back to her host family. She calls her real family band Sofian, but no one answers. She looks at the chessboard she and Sofian played with back home. She starts a painting but has no inspiration. Getting frustrated, starts crying and rips a hole in the canvas. We zoom in to see the hole in the painting.
