CAUTION: MILD SPOILER:
There's been a rash of multi-ethnic `feelgood movies in the last year or so `What's Cooking' and `Bend it like Beckham' from Gurinda Chadha, and `Monsoon Wedding' from the director of this film, Mira Nair. Another not-so-feelgood movie about ethnic conflict was `Earth', from Deepa Mehta, which dealt with the aftermath of the partition of the Punjab along the Radcliffe Line in 1947.
This film however, made 10 years ago, highlights neither comedy nor disaster; it is really a light romantic drama of the Romeo and Juliet type. One of the lovers, young Afro-American Demetrius, (Denzel Washington), is not even particularly likeable, grim, humourless, focused on getting ahead in his cleaning business. The other, East Indian Mina (Sarita Choudhury), is gorgeous, sexy and at a loose end trouble about to happen, in fact. They meet literally by accident. She runs a borrowed `Pimpmobile' (a pink 70s Lincoln convertible) into the back of his van, and he initially uses her in an unsuccessful attempt to make a former girlfriend jealous. Soon, however, the hormones come into their own, and we are treated to some tasteful but erotic sex.
As always in such movies, true love prevails, but not until there occurs a series of escapades demonstrating that there is plenty of bigotry on both sides, even from people who are scarcely aware that there are Indians other than the North American indigenous ones. Once the affair is revealed, both families condemn it, business dries up, and even the white-owned bank is quick to call up Demetrius' loan. Why some people still find interracial sexual relationships distasteful can no doubt be traced to early conditioning, but the lovers are also up against envy and their family's conventional expectations.
A parallel story here is Mina's lawyer father's quest to get back the property in Uganda he had to abandon when the dictator Idi Amin expelled the Asian minority in 1973. Born in Uganda, Jay (Roshan Seth also the father in `Monsoon Wedding') has never accepted his loss and accepted the challenge of the new country, while his less well educated relatives have got themselves established as small business entrepreneurs in motels. (His wife supports the family by running a liquor shop.) Only at the end of the film, when he finally returns to Kampala, does he realise that, despite the emotional pull, there's no going back to the past.
Your correspondent drove through the southern Mississippi setting for this movie in October 2000 (even lunching in Biloxi, the location for Demetrius and Mina's naughty weekend) and can vouch for the authenticity of the locations and the grip East African Asians have on the hotel business there, though it seems Biloxi itself has fallen victim to some big casino developments since 1991. It's easy to see why the Asians have done well the motels might not be luxurious but they are clean, friendly and the level of service is high. Demetrius and Mina probably face a fairly mundane future, perhaps behind the counter of such a place, but it will be their choice, not their family's, and who knows where their children might venture to.
There's been a rash of multi-ethnic `feelgood movies in the last year or so `What's Cooking' and `Bend it like Beckham' from Gurinda Chadha, and `Monsoon Wedding' from the director of this film, Mira Nair. Another not-so-feelgood movie about ethnic conflict was `Earth', from Deepa Mehta, which dealt with the aftermath of the partition of the Punjab along the Radcliffe Line in 1947.
This film however, made 10 years ago, highlights neither comedy nor disaster; it is really a light romantic drama of the Romeo and Juliet type. One of the lovers, young Afro-American Demetrius, (Denzel Washington), is not even particularly likeable, grim, humourless, focused on getting ahead in his cleaning business. The other, East Indian Mina (Sarita Choudhury), is gorgeous, sexy and at a loose end trouble about to happen, in fact. They meet literally by accident. She runs a borrowed `Pimpmobile' (a pink 70s Lincoln convertible) into the back of his van, and he initially uses her in an unsuccessful attempt to make a former girlfriend jealous. Soon, however, the hormones come into their own, and we are treated to some tasteful but erotic sex.
As always in such movies, true love prevails, but not until there occurs a series of escapades demonstrating that there is plenty of bigotry on both sides, even from people who are scarcely aware that there are Indians other than the North American indigenous ones. Once the affair is revealed, both families condemn it, business dries up, and even the white-owned bank is quick to call up Demetrius' loan. Why some people still find interracial sexual relationships distasteful can no doubt be traced to early conditioning, but the lovers are also up against envy and their family's conventional expectations.
A parallel story here is Mina's lawyer father's quest to get back the property in Uganda he had to abandon when the dictator Idi Amin expelled the Asian minority in 1973. Born in Uganda, Jay (Roshan Seth also the father in `Monsoon Wedding') has never accepted his loss and accepted the challenge of the new country, while his less well educated relatives have got themselves established as small business entrepreneurs in motels. (His wife supports the family by running a liquor shop.) Only at the end of the film, when he finally returns to Kampala, does he realise that, despite the emotional pull, there's no going back to the past.
Your correspondent drove through the southern Mississippi setting for this movie in October 2000 (even lunching in Biloxi, the location for Demetrius and Mina's naughty weekend) and can vouch for the authenticity of the locations and the grip East African Asians have on the hotel business there, though it seems Biloxi itself has fallen victim to some big casino developments since 1991. It's easy to see why the Asians have done well the motels might not be luxurious but they are clean, friendly and the level of service is high. Demetrius and Mina probably face a fairly mundane future, perhaps behind the counter of such a place, but it will be their choice, not their family's, and who knows where their children might venture to.