Starring Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Kulbushan Kharbanda, Jaaved Jaaferi, Ranjit Chowdhry. Written and Directed by Deepa Mehta. In English.
A New Delhi family welcomes home Jatin (Jaaferi) and Sita (Das) from their honeymoon. Jatin's brother Ashok (Kharbanda) runs a take-away restaurant with his wife Radha (Azmi) and the new couple lives with them. Radha is steadfast in her devotion to her husband, despite the fact that her husband spends much of his time with a spiritual leader attempting to rid himself of any form of desire, so he can be closer to God. He has done so because she is unable to have children, and for 15 years her marriage has been sexless and passionless.
Jatin didn't really want to marry Sita. His beautiful Chinese girlfriend longs to go to Hong Kong, so she turned down Jatin's request for marriage. But Ashok kept pressuring Jatin to marry, so he could have sons, and continue the family name, since Ashok could not. Upon returning home, he continually spends his nights with his girlfriend, leaving Sita alone and unhappy. Ashok tells his brother it is his duty to forsake his girlfriend, and begin a family with Sita, but Jatin refuses to give up his girlfriend. Sita questions the demands of tradition and duty. Soon, Radha begins to question her own devotion to family duty, and starts to consider her own needs and desires. The two women form a bond based on their isolation and loneliness, but it blossoms into a love affair that neither could have initially imagined.
Canadian director Mehta has created a film beautiful to behold - the cinematography is lush and sensuous. The story is told at a slow and relaxed pace (sometimes too relaxed). The actors are all excellent. Das is feisty and an attractive free spirit. Azmi is exceptionally good, conveying a woman whose spirit has been broken by the weight of Indian traditional values and guilt over her inability to have children. Kharbanda expertly portrays a man rigidly tied to upholding what is considered correct, not knowing how to act as things around him change beyond his control. Jaaveri is good as the man who can't have what he really wants, but is genuinely torn over what this does to his life and his new wife. The characters are not presented as good ones and evil ones, but as people living in a modern and changing India where the desire for greater freedom and independence conflicts with the continuity of the family and Indian tradition. The ending where Ashok confronts Radha in their home is a bit out of place - it takes the title metaphor a bit too literally. But overall, this is an interesting and illuminating look at modern India.
