Larvatus Prodeo

The Brisvegas Queer Film Festival is on at the moment. Aside from getting to be in the same spot as just about every single lesbian and queer woman in Brisbane, there are also obviously the delights associated with the re-opening of the Brisbane Powerhouse after its sad absence for six months when the Spark Bar and the performance spaces were being remodelled, rejigged and redecorated. Anyway, that’s by the by.

I went to see Nina’s Heavenly Delights tonight. Being appropriately delighted I retired to a local Indian restaurant – the film features as one of its main plot points the entry of The New Taj (Nina’s family’s Glasgow restaurant) in a Curry Cook Off on Korma TV – very reminiscent of Iron Chef – and you just couldn’t watch so much wonderfully spicy food preparation without wanting to savour some actual spice! The film is just your average Glasgow Bollywood crossover lesbian flick. (Heh.) As formulaic as can be, but it’s fun, and cute, and funny. I was interested to see what people on IMDB and critics had to say about it, not having heard of the film before I saw the BQFF program. I thought it’d be fun when I read the program blurb about it, and I’d see anything starring Laura Fraser.

That subsequent resort to the intertubes is where the story gets interesting. (Does anyone else read online reviews after they’ve seen a film?)

You could have shot holes in the plot quite readily, and the direction wasn’t as tight as it could be. But I have to think that some of the critics totally missed not the plot, but the genre. Basically it’s a Bollywood movie. So you get the sexy bits being a kiss, you have the musical around the dinner table, and the big dance number at the end (this time with the background being a Loch and some of the dancers being drag queens), you get the cheesy acting, and the predictable plot twists and soppy romance.

Folks who’d been to see it and commented on IMDB got it:

I laughed at the witty, self-humorous dialogue, jiggled in my seat alongside the Bollywood songs, and drooled at the sight of all that delicious food. This is a rare gem which entertains the majority and identifies with the minority. You’ll end up rushing to your nearest Curry House and checking out the chef!

Its a film that represents many people’s lives (family, culture, sex and religion). So many films that deal with gay culture build on a huge foundation of shame. This kind of film helps ethnic minorities feel more comfortable about their sexuality. Its pioneering films like this that turn the concept of shame-about-sexuality, upside down. Easily on par with Bend It Like Beckham, yet so different from other East/West films. Cooking and food theme was wonderful – very cleverly done. It did capture the Bollywood escapism and the feel good factor. And the acting was superb! Really enjoyed Suman.

And our family belted out singing along to the soundtrack which we are looking forward to buying.

It’s a Bollywood crossover film, remember.

But the film critics didn’t like it at all.

This film does not tick the ‘right’ buttons for white expectations of an Asian British film or a queer film and so people may be wrong footed. So there is no culture clash with parents who are living an ‘Asian’ read outdated culture with westernised children, no arranged marriage, no white person learning and being surprised by ‘Asian’ culture. No belly laughs ensuing from said conflicts. Instead we have a film about being true to yourself and learning to follow your passions for whatever – cooking, dance, love. I wait for the day that Black filmmakers can make work without having to conform to the prescribed script written for them to fulfil and they can just follow their passions.

I hate the way this film has been criticized in the press. By insisting, as the BBC does in their review of her film, that any treatment of Asian queerness needs to be portrayed as brutish and gritty, and that any story of an Asian family coping with a queer member must be shown through the lens of a “multicultural family and their troubled psyches”, the press is putting the same straight-jacket on Asian filmmakers, as they do on black filmmakers, when they insist that the only stories that can come of out the black community are stories of gun violence and rat-infested squats.

The critics demand that queer Asians aren’t allowed to do “Kissing Jessica Stein”, that domain is reserved for whites only. Reading the reviews, you get the clear picture that the crime they want to charge Pratibha with, is not “making a bad film” but for “not telling an Asian queer story in the appropriate manner”, as set out by films like East is East and My Beautiful Laundrette. That bloody sucks. More power to her for daring to challenge the stereotypes.

I think there’s something in that. Bollywood films aren’t meant to be dark, or realistic, or plausible. But aren’t they an authentic expression of Indian culture? Can’t we have our samosas and eat them too? There’s an odd dysjunction, I think, between the expectations of film reviewers and critics and those of audiences, which really hits home when a queer story is viewed through the lens of an authentic cultural expression – not as some sort of “problem” or angsty agonising about ethnic relations or whatever.

Incidentally, in contrast to all the gloomy depressing films (some of which are fine films, don’t get me wrong) that have come out of Scotland, this one actually made me want to go to the place!