Dir. Ken Loach, 2004, UK/Germany/Italy/Spain/France, 104 mins
Cast: Atta Yaqub, Eva Birthistle, Shabana Bakhsh, Ahmed Riaz Ae Fond Kiss is a cross cultural romance set amongst contemporary Glasgow's Asian population. Cassim, a young Scottish-born Asian, is idolised by his close-knit Muslim family, and engaged to marry his cousin Jasmine, who is yet to arrive in the country. However, he leads another life away from the traditions and expectations of his family. An aspiring DJ, he meets and falls in love with Roisin, an Irish Catholic, and develops a relationship that threatens to disrupt not only his family, but also her career as a school music teacher. The third in an unofficial 'Glasgow Trilogy' (after 1998's My Name Is Joe and 2002's Sweet Sixteen), the latest film from Ken Loach has a more upbeat and lighter texture than we have come to expect from the veteran director. The protagonists are young, bright and successful, and their love story is played out sensitively in Roisin's airy, high-ceilinged apartment or in Cassim's trendy warehouse club. (Loach even whisks them away to a sun-drenched Spain, where the two lovers enjoy a brief respite from the illicit nature of their relationship.). However, if this is a small scale love story, it is loaded with wider political, cultural and religious implications. Cassim belongs to the new generation of British Asians, and is largely representative of the opposing pressures they face: respect and love for their family and cultural heritage, versus a desire to shape their own future away from the expectations of tradition. His younger sister, Tahara, is prepared to deal with this dichotomy head on. In an early scene she gives a speech in front of her classmates which challenges simplistic stereotypes, describing herself as "a Glaswegian Muslim woman of Pakistani descent who supports Glasgow Rangers in a Catholic school." She also clashes with her family over her wish to move away to study, while Cassim avoids confrontation with his volatile father at all costs, and dares not upset his emotional mother. Instead, he creates a 'second life' - at home, he is the dutiful son, speaking Punjabi and agreeing to his arranged marriage, yet outside he sheds this identity, speaking English, mixing with friends in bars and clubs, and pursues his relationship with Roisin, a 'goree' he knows his parents would never accept. Loach takes care to show that the Catholic establishment can be just as divisive and intolerant as the traditional Islam Cassim's family represents. When their relationship becomes common knowledge, Roisin is told by her priest, in casually racist language, that her job at a Catholic school is under threat. Indeed, one of the film's first images explicitly introduces this theme of the control religion places over the choices of the individual: in reference to Celtic's 2003 UEFA Cup final, a sandwich board on the street announces that the 'CHURCH TELLS CELTIC FANS NO NOOKIE IN SEVILLE". Right on cue, a passing dog urinates all over the sign. Loach's regular scriptwriter Paul Laverty has said that the starting point for this project was the change in attitudes towards Muslims in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, citing that Pakistani friends who had lived all their lives in Britain, suddenly felt more demonised and less secure. (in fact, when Irish Catholics immigrants arrived in Scotland 150 years ago, they suffered similar prejudices, from the Protestant majority.). Another tumultuous day in history hangs heavy over Loach's film: the 1947 partition of India, which led to the forced migration of millions of dispossessed Hindus and Muslims. Cassim's father Tariq is scarred by the memory of the violence that occurred that day - his twin brother was one of thousands murdered en route to the infant Pakistan - and this goes some way to explaining his instinct for tradition and fear of change. It certainly figures in Cassim's devotion to his father, something which he has difficulty in explaining to Roisin. As we've come to expect from Ken Loach, the performances (from a mixture of non-actors and professionals) seem so truthful the film almost feels like it is eavesdropping. Yaqub and Birthistle as the lovers display a real chemistry absent from too many on-screen pairings, and Ahmed Riaz is particuarly affecting as Tariq, the patriarch watching his children move further and further away from the traditions he defines himself by. At the film's conclusion, the lovers are reunited in defiance of these traditions, and of the Robert Burns poem to which the title refers : "Ae Fond Kiss, and then we sever/Ae Farewell, alas, forever". Gus Alvarez |
