BHAJI ON THE BEACH
A film review by Hans Huttel
Copyright 1993 Hans Huttel
[as seen at the Edinburgh Film Festival, Friday August 20, 1993] Directed by Gurinder Chadha. Country of origin: United Kingdom (1993)
What do women talk about when there are no men around? Hey, what do *Indian* women talk about when there are no men around?
In this film, the directing debut of Gurinder Chadha, we finally get the answer to this last question. BHAJI ON THE BEACH is another good example of a project that has been partially funded by Channel Four (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE and in particular THE CRYING GAME are two Channel Four-co-sponsored films that those outside the UK will probably be familiar with.)
The film is about a group of Indian women from Birmingham on a day trip to that great bastion of British tackiness, the seaside town of Blackpool. All the well-known archetypal characters are present on the bus. There's the old, Victorian aunt who keeps asking what the world is coming to. There's the independent, leather-jacket-wearing woman (who of course organised the event and drives the bus). There's the young middle-class woman who has just discovered that she is pregnant with a guy that she hasn't told her her parents about because he is black. There are the 15-year old girls who are only after one thing: boys! There is the young, single mother with an obsessive ex-husband. There is the middle-aged woman who was a lively, talented girl when in college but is now, 30 years later, stuck with a fat, balding husband and a career selling newspapers in his corner shop. All familiar stereotypes, here with the twist that they are Indian.
(And then of course there is a "real" Indian woman from Bombay who manages to make the other women look very old-fashioned!)
But it isn't going to be an entirely untroubled outing! The obsessive ex-husband goes to Blackpool to get back his ex-wife and their child, helped by his two brothers, a shell-suit wearing yob and a very reluctant "nice guy." The Afro-Caribbean guy who got the young middle-class woman pregnant doesn't know what to do when she breaks the news, but finally he gets on his motorbike and drives up to Blackpool. As to what happens next... I am not going to tell you. Go see the film when it opens!!
Yes, I am sure to disappoint some of you: I liked this film. It is certainly not a kitchen-sink drama; even though the film deals with some pretty serious subjects and is never afraid to treat them seriously, the film never gets depressing and there is plenty of comic relief along the way. There is actually something typically British about the approach and the humour. (After all, it is set in Blackpool.) Yes, the characters are almost all Indian and female but they are also pretty universal (and there is none of the misanthropy of a Hanif Kureishi here). The same goes for the storyline, actually. You definitely don't have to be Indian or female to enjoy this film.
-- Hans Huttel email: hans@dcs.ed.ac.uk University of Edinburgh phone: (+44) (0)31-650-5997 Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK
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