Originally posted in the
2003 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films thread.
Imagine all of the following hackneyed elements rolled into one 2-hour movie:
- the sports movie featuring an underdog player on whose shoulders the Big Game comes to rest;
- the female empowerment movie about women struggling to define themselves in a man's world;
- the immigrant movie in which the new generation just can't relate to the concerns of its parents (recently revived by My Big Fat Greek Wedding);
- the "person with a talent" movie in which a youngster with some special ability (artistic, athletic) has to struggle for acceptance in a world that wants him/her to choose a more respectable profession;
- the teenage romantic triangle;
- the sibling rivalry plot (but deep down they care for each other as family members should).
That gives you some idea of the plot elements to expect in this film, but it can't prepare you for the cleverness, charm and sheer energy with which this remarkable project has been put together by director Gurinder Chadha (who also co-wrote the script).
Let me disclose up front that I know zero about soccer (or football, or whatever). If I correctly understood what I learned in the film, the title refers to the ability of soccer star David Beckham (and tabloid regular, thanks to marrying Posh Spice) to make the ball curve in just the right way to evade the goalie. That's the dream of teenage Jess, the raised-in-England child of a Sikh family relocated from India to London. The obstacles in Jess's way are formidable: There's no regular woman's team; her mother wants her to get married, cook and have a family like her sister is doing; her father wants her to become a solicitor; and the male friends with whom she hones her playing skills in the park are happy to include her but still treat her like a girl.
And then Jess meets Jules.
Jules has it a little easier. Her mother (played with pitch-perfect cluelessness by Juliet Stevenson) wants to interest her in girlie pursuits, but her father is happy to train her, and Jess has found an informal women's team set up as a kind of auxiliary to a men's team. At Jules' urging, Jess tries out and makes the team. Then she has to spend about half the movie lying to her family and sneaking off to practice. And when the Big Game, which will be attended by the professional American scout (!), is scheduled for the same day as Jess's sister's wedding . . . get the idea?
Along the way, Jess and Jules find themselves in a love triangle with their coach, nicely underplayed by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and get mistaken for lesbians by Jules's hopeless mum. One of the things that makes the movie work is the apparent effortlessness with which director Chadha juggles all these elements, and the effect of cramming so much incident into one movie is to reenergize routines that, by themselves, would seem shop-worn. It helps that the cast is a winning one, especially Parminder K. Nagra, who is never anything less than believeable as Jess.
The film is loaded with unexpected grace notes that are, all by themselves, worth the price of admission. I give nothing away by disclosing that the opening sequence is one of Jess's daydreams, which is rudely interrupted in a way that lays out Jess's whole predicament for you. A cell phone ringing at an engagement party leads to a great visual joke. A brief scene showing Jess's mother trying to teach her traditional Indian cooking tells you in a few hilarious frames that Jess's heart isn't in it. And when Jess faces her moment of truth in the Big Game, something so unexpected happens that I nearly fell out of my seat laughing. The closing scene, which involves a cricket match (a game I will NEVER understand), even manages to resolve a trailing plot point that I never imagined the movie would find a way to work out.
It's not an especially deep film, and one could argue that some of the resolutions are a little too easy (like a lot of TV shows, the plot relies on a father who, in the crunch, knows best). But it's a hopeful movie, which is why I suspect it's such a crowd-pleaser and has already done major box office in the U.K. Even the credits are exuberant. They feature a sing-a-long by what appears to be the entire cast and crew (and a few bloopers for good measure). It's obvious that everyone involved had a good time making the film, and the pleasure is right there on the screen.
M.
The Squid And The Whale 
A History Of Violence 
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