Dir. Pratibha Parmer, UK, 2006, 94 mins
Cast: Shelley Conn, Laura Fraser, Ronny Jhutti, Art Malik
Review by Peter Fraser
**Warning: Plot Spoilers**
Boasting an enticing title appropriate to a film in which the warm, sensual pleasures of emotional, sexual and, above all, culinary desire win out over the more cerebral dictates of familial, ethnic and cultural responsibilities, which are finally shown to be far from mutually contradictory, Nina’s Heavenly Delights has at its core the very universal theme of heart versus head and the struggle to reconcile the two. Given the lush expressionism of the mise-en-scene in which curries and courtship are photographed with equal intoxication (which may surprise those who have followed the director’s documentary career) we might presume that Pratibha Parmer is on the side of the cherubim, who revel in earthly physical joys, rather than the seraphim, who transport themselves through the self-denying ecstasies of the spirit, but if ‘Heavenly Delights’ suggests anything, it’s the union of the two. Indeed, this magical realist vision of Glasgow precisely implies a romantic sphere in which dualities are reconciled, symbolised by Nina’s realisation that the perfect curry recipe is nothing without the right ingredients and by her burgeoning, eventually irresistible, attraction to her friend Lisa, different in many ways but in the most important ways the same.
A funny and whimsical film, Nina’s Heavenly Delights follows newcomer Shelley Conn’s Nina as she returns to Glasgow on the occasion of her father’s death to confront the family and friends that she forsook years previously when she escaped an arranged marriage and left local boy Sanjay standing at the altar. On her return, she and Sanjay exchange some barbed rejoinders but it’s Nina’s relationship to her mother and her dead father and particularly her old friend Lisa, played by Laura Fraser, that assume the most significance. In spectral form, Nina’s father encourages her to enter the curry restaurant where she helped him as a child into a competition to win the Korma Radio prize for best curry house, against Sanjay and his father Raj (the ever delightful Art Malik). Although dead, Nina’s father is spurring her on to life while her mother, who has clearly struggled for many years in a less than perfect marriage, can’t understand why Nina shouldn’t do what she had to do: marry for tradition and for family, rather than for love. Yet Nina finds love in the place that her mother least expects it as she and Lisa generate some heat in the kitchen on the way to the Korma Radio live final in which these private conflicts overflow in public form.
So, do the various ingredients of Nina’s Heavenly Delights come together to make the perfect dish? The plot is as old as Jane Austen, probably as old as romance, or rather the romantic ideal of courtly love, and no doubt every culture, every country, has its own version somewhere along the way but while this central theme is in some sense universal and timeless, it is couched, and is always couched, through obstacles and conflicts that though still very general are also quite specific to the day. So in this case the obstacles to the final happy embrace, which create conflicts for the characters, are those of duty and desire, tradition and modernity, Indian ‘eastern’ and British ‘western’ culture, none of those being exactly equivalent. In this case the nature of the love affair, its homosexuality, gives these conflicts an extra piquancy simply because such affairs remain taboo all over the world and because it raises the stakes beyond Nina’s more predictable reluctance to engage in an arranged marriage, which of course was shared by one Elizabeth Bennett. Yet as well as telling a personal story, Parmer is simply assuming what should be obvious: that in most important ways homosexual and heterosexual romances are the same. It’s prejudices that make the difference.
Just as any monolithic identity, such as ‘eastern’ or 'western’, ‘traditional or ‘modern’, can be shown on closer examination to be heterogeneous, so too does Parmer suggest that duty and desire can be reconciled through a more enlightened perspective. Nina wins the competition and Lisa wins Nina’s heart. This heady and hearty combination of good food and fine romance is reminiscent of films like Big Night and Eat Drink, Man Woman, while some of the humour recalls popular britflicks like The Full Monty and East is East with similarly committed performances from a talented cast. If you like those films then you should like this. Nina’s Heavenly Delights is a familiar dish but served with many fine and spicy ingredients.
|
