Kritiken

Despite Bhaji on the Beach’s moderate success, it would take Chadha another ten years to get her big break with the 2002 box office smash Bend It Like Beckham. That film also dealt with a British Indian woman’s struggle to negotiate two competing sets of cultural expectations. What feels fresh about both films now is the way they use humour to navigate the heaviness of ­inherited cultural baggage.

From Simmi’s mention of intersectionality through to issues of domestic abuse, patriarchy, class, generational divides, racism, sexism, anti-blackness, homophobia and unplanned pregnancy, Bhaji on the Beach still dissects the lives of British South Asian women with such nuance, knowledge and empathy that it’s the gold standard for art about our community.

The overall style is realist, though there are a few fleeting fantasy interludes that don’t work very well; most of the various feminist miniplots intersect at a male strip joint, where some strident melodrama triumphs briefly over the comedy.

Bhaji on the Beach's comprehensive success reflects its ability to deal with complex issues in a simple and conventional narrative. In the process, it opens up, with humanity and warmth, the closed world of Asian women.

In its treatment of questions of cross-cultural conflict and assimilation across generations, the film recalls The Joy Luck Club, but Bhaji attempts no epic sweep, no crossing of oceans and decades to tell its tale. It is of the here and now, of daily grinds and necessary escapes.

"Bhaji on the Beach" is at the opposite end of any scale from the British films that win wide audiences here, such as "Howard's End" or "Four Weddings And A Funeral."

The result is a movie that resembles one of TV's less inspired problem dramas. The filmmaker's sympathies lie clearly with the women; it's one of the movie's chief failures that its male characters, who are also Indian and suffer from the same pressures, are so flatly drawn.

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.

"Bhaji on the Beach" is one of those small but remarkable pictures that smiles at the supposed difficulties of movie-making. Warm and charming while sacrificing neither its integrity nor its point of view, it covers considerable personal and political territory without overreaching or condensing. And it never forgets to have fun.

Ms. Chadha... weaves her characters' personal crises into a broader social portrait of their adopted homeland. She does this with impressive deftness and humor, even when addressing the ever-present matter of racism.

Syal and Chadra keep their contrasted, if somewhat predictable stories bobbing along nicely... All in all, it's a warm, refreshing comedy.

The comedy is too soft-centred to make the teeth crunch on these themes as they should. But there is flavoursome charm in the performances and the seedy-photogenic setting.