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Some Reviews of the film - discuss

posted 19 years ago by shaka_a777
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‘Bhaji on the Beach’

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 08, 1994

"Bhaji on the Beach," a cultural caper about the Indian community in England, has the double-edged quality of most first-time directorial efforts. It's delightfully original, in that it introduces you to an Asian diaspora largely unseen in Western movies (unless you caught "Wild West," "Sammy & Rosie Get Laid" or "Mississippi Masala"). But "Bhaji," co-written and directed by Gurinder Chadha, is also thematically overfamiliar and predictable. Waiting for the movie's inevitable conclusion becomes wearying.

One day in modern-day, immigrant-infused Birmingham, several melodramatic conflicts are raging:

* Ginder (Kim Vithana) has left her abusive husband Ranjit (Jimmi Harkishin), taking their 5-year-old son with her. Ranjit, outraged at losing face, searches for his wife all over town.

* Hashida (Sarita Khajuria), a promising medical student, has just discovered she's pregnant. Oliver (Mo Sesay), the boyfriend responsible, happens to be black. Oliver, who has hidden his identity from Hashida's racially purist parents, isn't enthusiastic about taking paternal responsibility.

* News agent Asha (Lalita Ahmed), who feels the tension between her old-world values of duty, honor and sacrifice and the English modern life of tacky consumerism, keeps experiencing guilt-bound reveries in which she's confronted by Hindu god Rama.

These separate stories link when community worker Simi (Shaheen Khan) leads a group of Asian women -- including Ginder, Hashida, Asha and crusty matriarch Pushpa (Zohra Segal) to Blackpool, a seaside resort. The idea of this "Asian Ladies Outing," Simi says, is to throw off the double yoke of racism and sexism and "have a female fun time."

But the one-day vacation turns out to be a multiple group encounter, in which every conceivable Asian-immigrant issue comes to bear: racism from white English, unwanted pregnancy, interracial dating, divorce, old cultural values versus new, feminism versus traditional family duties, and so on.

Meanwhile, abandoned husband Ranjit, accompanied by his brothers, is heading this way to reclaim his wife. And Oliver, who has now decided he wants to work things out with Hashida, is speeding towards Blackpool -- while Hashida considers abortion.

Since the narrative journey to Blackpool and back is so signposted, viewers must take delight in the less-predictable character action. Asian teenagers Ladhu (Nisha Nayar) and Madhu (Renu Kochar), part of the ladies outing, hit it off with a couple of cute English dweebs; and Asha is not averse to the gentlemanly flirtations of eccentric old vaudevillian Ambrose Waddington (Peter Cellier).

Director Chadha also introduces a wry soundtrack full of bhangra songs -- the Asian dance hall music, which puts Indian flavor into established western tunes. As the women's group heads for Blackpool, for instance, a Punjabi version of Cliff Richard's "Summer Holiday" (performed by the bhangra band KK Kings) serenades the scene.

But "Bhaji" (which takes its title from the Anglo-Indian expression for snack food) doesn't have the transcendental spark of, say, "The Commitments" (a greater, and infinitely more musical cultural comedy). Although Chadha's compassion for her characters is fully evident, she tethers them to the story plot lines. To pay more vivid tribute to her Asian milieu, she has a lot of stylistic unraveling to do.

[–] shaka_a777 19 years ago

Bhaji on the Beach
A film by Gurinder Chadha, 1994, 100 minutes

Reviewed by Julian Samuel
Bhaji on the Beach is an energetic, race-and-sex-relations comedy that is a must see for anyone who thinks that putting these issues-of-the-epoch in the mass media is a nice way to deal with the traumas plaguing South Asian women.

Community-orientated films are a superb way to dramatize, confront, and to come to terms with interracial sex and pregnancies, and other configurationsthat are a source of endless trouble for South Asian parents who just can't forget India, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda etc.

Bhaji follows hot on the heels of but does not go beyond other "Black," (in the UK, South Asians are classified as"Black") British masterpieces such as Hanif Kureshi's My Beautiful Laundrette, and The Buddha of Suburbia; and Isaac Julien's gay landmark, Young Soul Rebels.(an independent film, made in London, circa 1991) Bhaji's plot does not strain the imagination. Here's a part of it: a South Asian community leader/political activist takes an all-ages-all-classes group of South Asian women to Blackpool. In the old days, before we all got to England and improved the English diet it was a
white holidaying spot. But UK immigration changed all that.

The insertion of these splendiferously dressed women on the beach include a battered wife who during the trip makes up her mind to leave her husband forever; a teenage couple who, one gets the impression, are sexually involved; a shilvar kamees clad granny who is mechanical scripted in to
contrast old-world values with "English" ones. Chastity, obedience to Gods, and a reverent respect for the family bread-winner are up for gentle feminist review. The granny stereotype has to act shocked most of the time. Boring. The biggest shock for her is the pregnancy of one of the young Asian
women by her African boyfriend. This dilemma is elegantly solved, as the rest of the group drive
back to town, with a tender lingering kiss during a interracial sunset. Thank god this scene will bother some Asians.

At Blackpool, sexually explorative members of the outing meet English cowboys who work at a hot-dog stand. One of the women gets into a bit of interracial necking, but before anything exciting happens her protective about-to-de-cloak lesbian friend pulls her back into the virginal harem of the Asian community.

The acting is earnest cardboard stereotyping au maximum. No one evolves, everyone stays in the same charactival rut, and the story is as tense as watching Rajiv Gandhi have tea and biscuits at a press conference on the Tibet question.

However, it is stereotyping with a huge difference: it is brown stereotyping.

Bhaji is more than mundane; check this for excellence: "I just needed you to be there" says the pregnant woman. And there are hundreds of lines like this. But even at that, Bhaji is saved by being more or less a first of its kind, and it does not grind on inexorably. It is ultra light race-sensitive entertainment, for the lily-livered.

Notwithstanding the simplistic editing -- there is not one unpredictable cut-- this film is brilliant even if the South Asian in-jokes will pass over the heads of both white Canadian tribes. British audiences, however, are hip to all this post-colonial modernity, so they will get most of the culturally anchored funnies.

Bhaji is better than most films made in Canada in the last five years. Quebec films don't even come close, and of course, Quebec lives in mortal fear of black actors, artists, intellectuals and directors and therefore
does not encourage them. Director Gurinder Chadha is lucky to have generous film funders who take her so very seriously.

Imagine the National Film Board or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation putting bucks into such a film without getting utterly terrorized by the racegender questions. Forget it. Canada will not catch-up, not even by thetime Hong Kong slips into Beijing control.

A warning: there are hectares of songs and dances:
You can take the Asian out of Asia but you can't take the Bollywood out of the Asian.

[–] shaka_a777 19 years ago

By Chris Hicks
Deseret News movie critic
Overplotted and somewhat confusing in its first third, "Bhaji at the Beach" nonetheless manages to overcome its narrative weaknesses and develops into an engrossing character study almost in spite of itself.

A low-budget effort that strains its lack of funding in places, the film is an exploration of several generations of an extended Indian family that has settled in Birmingham, England, and gradually been Westernized, unhappily discovering that the result is divided loyalties. How do you embrace new cultural mores while retaining treasured traditions of the past?

But screenwriter Meera Syal and director Gurinder Chadha have even stronger feelings about Indian women, who suffer not only racism as immigrants in a new land, but sexism within their own culture.

An ensemble effort, there are several primary characters whose stories dominate the film:

— Asha (Lalita Ahmed), an older aunt who wears traditional clothing and operates a video store, frequently hallucinates, apparently a byproduct of her being unable to come to terms with embracing Western influences and abandoning longtime traditions.

— Ginder (Kim Vithana), who has taken her young son and is in hiding at an Asian women's shelter, is struggling with her resolve to achieve some independence and her desire to reconcile with her abusive husband, whose violent tendencies are egged on by his even more volatile brother and his parents' disapproval that he has "allowed" his wife to leave. If she returns to him, however, she fears her son will grow up to continue the cycle of violence.

— Hashida (Sarita Khajuria), a young college student whose parents have paved the way for her to attend medical school, discovers she is pregnant. She must decide how to handle the situation, which is complicated by the fact that her boyfriend is black, and she knows her family will disapprove.

— Madhu (Renu Kochar) and Bina (Surendra Kochar) are teenagers who have fully embraced Western culture and ridicule their elders, yet they are insecure about how English boys perceive them.

After some all too brief introductions of these and quite a few other characters, the women board a bus at the shelter and head for a day of fun at a seaside resort. The second half of the film takes place entirely at the resort, where each woman will have an experience that changes her thinking to some degree.

Tempered with humor, the emphasis is on melodrama, and there are a few false starts that hamper the film's energy early on. But once it gets going, the female characters grow and become quite engrossing.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the male characters, who are, in general, brutes, louts or dolts. They are essentially cartoons, and their scenes — especially in the film's climax — weaken the film. (An exception here is Hashida's boyfriend, played very well by Mo Sesay, who conveys the perfect mixture of confusion and resolve, wrestling with his desire to do the right thing, while realizing that it will change his life dramatically.)

"Bhaji at the Beach" is a first feature for both Chadha and Syal, and it has weaknesses that come with the territory. But there are also many rewards, not the least of which is thought-provoking material that will likely prompt discussion after the film.

The bhaji of the title, by the way, is an English hybrid of Indian food, a snack akin to vegetable tempura.

"Bhaji at the Beach" is not rated but would probably get an R for violence, profanity, vulgarity and some nudity (male strippers and some boys in a car mooning the bus).

[–] rasheed_node 12 years ago

LOL!

"But "Bhaji" (which takes its title from the Anglo-Indian expression for snack food)"

The word 'Bhaji', here in this movie means 'elder sister' (Probably refering to the presence of Zohra Sehgal in the role of Pushpa, playing an old guard). It's a Punjabi language word and the 'Anglo-Indian expression' you're referring to doesn't mean 'snack food' but cooked or uncooked vegetable and it's a Hindi language word.