The story of a stunt-loving schoolgirl who sets out to thwart her sister’s wedding plans, writer-director Nida Manzoor’s debut is a mix of references – while being entirely original – by Mohammad Zaheer.
When British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) finds out that her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) has a crush on a man and wants to get married, she asks her friends to help with the wedding and save her from throwing her life away. While there have been countless movies about marriage in the history of cinema, probably none have had as much high-octane energy – and martial arts – as The Polite Society.
Add something like this:
– Which movie goes wrong in an arranged marriage
– The best movies to watch in April
– “The weirdest movie of the year”
It’s easy to imagine British writer-director Nida Manzoor’s explosive debut garnering a following along the lines of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010), a cult action comedy that it effortlessly channels with its ferocious visual style and implausible battle scenarios. In fact, at various points and sometimes simultaneously, viewers may also be reminded of Kill Bill, Get Out, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix and many other classics without the film ever feeling derivative or all over the place. Polite Society is a work of many genres and themes: that it weaves these together so seamlessly and cohesively is a testament to Manzoor’s prowess behind the pen and lens.
It is a film about family and sisterhood. At the heart of it all is Ria, a schoolgirl who wants to be a stuntwoman, and her love for her older sister. Although British South Asians are one of the largest minority groups in Britain, and despite the success of features such as Bend it Like Beckham and East is East, there have been relatively few films focusing on them. Polite Society brings out the dynamics of two very separate families in that community – on one side the Khan sisters and their parents and on the other Raheela (Nimra Bucha) and her son Salim (Akshay Khanna) who is getting married to Lena. Raheela is an arrogant mother and Salim is a mummy’s son. Their haunting co-dependence and love contrasts starkly between the covers where the parents are scattered supporting their headstrong daughters whose dreams and ambitions they don’t understand, and their family conforming to the community’s expectations of tradition and respect. The film reveals the toxicity of such societal pressures, from the way Ria’s teacher pushes her to pursue a career as a doctor instead of her passion, to the way the older characters judge the marital status and future prospects of the younger ones.
However, it is important to note that Lena chooses to marry Salim, a handsome and successful genetics researcher, and her parents have not arranged the marriage, as would be stereotypical for a film centered on British South Asian characters. Manzoor was adamant that it did not have a forced marriage plot, although many of the film’s directors pushed for it during the development of the script over the years. It’s a creative choice that adds a layer of narrative. It would have been so much simpler for the audience to oppose a marriage where Lena doesn’t have much freedom. Being hell-bent on sabotaging the relationship her sister is seemingly infatuated with makes her actions questionable at first.