America Makes Everyone Give Up Smoking.

Mira Nair's 2001 international hit Monsoon Wedding is a seemingly simple but surprisingly complex tale set around a traditional Punjabi wedding during the rainy season. Expensive and elaborate, it brings together family from all corners of the globe, one of very few things that can do this - guests travel from Australia, the US, all over India.

Ostensibly, the film centres on the father of the bride, Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah), but his connectedness with the family sees a number of subplots come in. The bride, Aditi (Vasundhara Das), has been having an affair with her married boss, Vikram (Sameer Arya), a television presenter who will not leave his wife. Thus, she is having an arranged marriage to Hemant (Parvin Debas), whom she only met a couple of weeks earlier. It is rushed as he lives in America. During the film, they get to know each other for the first time in the couple of days leading up to the wedding, including arguments and reconciliations - a relationship and courtship crammed together into a matter of hours.


Ria (Shefali Shetty), a cousin of Aditi, provides the dramatic subplot, having been abused by an uncle Tej (Rajat Kapoor), Lalit's brother in law. She speaks out over the wedding weekend to stop a similar fate befalling her young cousin Aliyah. The contracted wedding event organiser PK Dubey (Vijay Raaz) gives us what is the true, love for love's sake subplot (as opposed to the pragmatic love story of the bride and groom) as he falls for the family's maid Alice (Tillotama Shome.) There is a gay subplot in the lack of masculinity shown by Aditi's younger brother Varun (Ishaan Nair), and a more modern flirt-fest involving Aditi's cousin, recently returned from Melbourne.


It's a lot of stories, and I think that doesn't help the story. It just feels like too many. Sure, it's a look at what goes on in the lead up to a wedding, the family secrets that can come out when under pressure, the feelings spread through the air, but none of the storylines quite hit home. I think they all get diluted a little too much by having to compete for air. It did look beautiful, however, captured by Declan Quinn, and the colours in the design of the film were, as expected for something taking heavy Bollywood influence, bold, rich and stunning.


It was an ok film, I'd say. Not a great one. Not a bad one. A fine way to spend a couple of hours, but not one I'm going to go back and repeat in a huge hurry. 3 stars.

We Were Shagged Out.

That's right, another Daniel Day Lewis film. Looking him up, I remembered that I've always wanted to see My Beautiful Laundrette, and never had.

Day Lewis plays a supporting role as Johnny in this 1985 feature from Stephen Frears (who did The Queen), playing below Gordon Warnecke as Omar. (I love watching older films, when you see otherwise huge above the line names in today's world credited somewhere in the middle of the pack. I love remembering that they weren't always stars.) Omar is of Pakistani heritage and soon set to start studying, at the behest of his father Ali (Roshan Seth.) In the meantime he is simply spending time around the house, looking after his alcoholic ex-journalist father. Ali sets Omar up with a job with family, working for Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) who runs an auto-repair workshop. Omar is soon promoted to managing a laundrette that Nasser also owns, though he negotiates a deal whereby he runs the shop, pays Nasser a fixed rent, and banks the profits.


Meanwhile he has run into an old school-friend and gang member Johnny, and the two have struck up a friendship that quickly develops into something more. Omar is hiding this from his family, so the opportunity for Johnny to leave his gang and help Omar develop the laundrette into something spectacular (as far as laundrettes go) is too perfect for them to give up - they get to spend enormous amounts of time together, alone, with cause.


The business goes well and Omar becomes quite cut-throat. Johnny is effectively destitute without Omar to support him, and Omar takes on a massive power ego, controlling Johnny as well. However, after Johnny is set upon by his ex-gang, the two reconcile. The ending is left beautifully open - they are obviously together, however the may appear to be mismatched, but the question of how long they will stay happy together remains.


All of the performances here are fantastic. Day Lewis, as always, exceptional, but the supports from a primarily subcontinental cast back him up strongly, while Warnecke carries the film very well. The grittiness of the world both of them inhabit (different kinds of underworld, but the underworld nonetheless) is very well portrayed, shot by Oliver Stapleton. It was also nice to see queer cinema told well, not preaching, not trying to make any sort of political point, and not steeped in historicism. (Well, watching it now it's historical, but at the time it was current.) Refreshingly, the Omar/Johnny relationship is not in any way a driving point of the film, really, nor does it cause any great turmoil. Despite the fact that it's closeted, it just is. And that doesn't happen all that often.


3.5 stars again.