GURINDER CHADDHA'S NEW FILM

Gurinder Chadha’s It’s A Wonderful Afterlife revolves around a wedding. Interestingly, several of Chadha’s films, whether it’s Monsoon Wedding, Bride And Prejudice or even Bend It Like Beckham, revolves around one. Quiz her on this and the filmmaker points out that marriage is uppermost on the minds of almost every Indian.

“From the time a girl is born, she is being moulded into a perfect bride who is supposed to be fair, beautiful, submissive, definitely not more intelligent than her husband and able to serve a ‘desi’ meal in minutes,” points out Chadha, admitting that her mother got her bridal suit stitched when she was visiting her parents in India. Gurinder was only six at the time. “The suit was pink with classic embroidery and I got matching gold sets made too. I wore it when I married Paul (Mayeda_Berges) when I was in my 30s. It was still beautiful,” she reminisces with a smile.

Getting real
The climax of her soon-to-release film has an elaborate wedding sequence for which the writer-director wanted to replicate a big fat Punjabi wedding. And to make it as ‘real’ as possible, she sent out invitations to her extended family in London who came together to join in the on-screen revelry. “We even got a priest from a ‘gurdwara’ in Southhall to conduct the rites,” she informs. What’s more, Chadha gave one of her bridal outfits to actress Goldy Notay to wear and made sure that everyone who was part of the scene was in their Sunday best.

The film is the story of a widow from Southall, Mrs Sethi, played by Shabana Azmi, who is obesssed with getting her daughter Roopi (Goldy Notay) settled. A number of suitors come calling but are put off by the overweight, not-exactly-beautiful, opinated bride-to-be with a broken engagement behind her. But every time Roopi is turned down, the groom-in-waiting disappears.

Using a killer curry, Mrs Sethi turns into a serial murderer who evades the police but not the spirits of her victims. Since they cannot be reincarnated until she dies and the murdering mother refuses to leave this world till her darling has found her Mr Right, the ghosts join hands to make the dream wedding come true.

Letter from suitors
Chadha recalls that when her husband Paul (Mayeda Berges) came to ask for her hand in marriage, her father showed him all the letters of those before him who had wanted to marry his daughter. “I hadn’t even know that he had horded them, it was really sweet,” she smiles.

The idea for It’s A Wonderful AfterLife came to her when she was watching The 100 Greatest Family Films’ on Channel 4 and narrator Bob Hoskins introduced the wedding scene from her movie, Bend It Like Beckham at No. 71. “I immediately remembered how much fun we’d had shooting that scene and wanted to replicate the experience without repeating myself. I thought maybe I could do it with a horror spin, where everything goes awry,” she informs.

It took two-and-a-half years for this My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Shaun Of The Dead script, on which she was working with her long-time collaborator and screenwriter husband Mayeda Berges, to shape up to her satisfaction. They went to the floors with it with the working title My Bloody Wedding.

PAATHSHAALA-REVIEW BY TUSHAR JOSHI OF MID-DAY

Paathshaala - Movie Review
By: Tushar Joshi Date: 2010-04-17 Place: Mumbai


Paathshaala
U; Drama
Dir: Milind Ukey
Cast: Shahid Kapur, Ayesha Takia, Nana Patekar, Sushmita Mukherjee, Sushant Singh, Anjaan Srivastav, Swini Khara
*

What's it about: Shahid Kapur singing a song with a bunch of chirpy kids overdosed on sugar in the backdrop, Nana Patekar's two-and-a-half expression (the raised eyebrow in the climax!), and Ayesha Takia as the chubby dietician who serves chips and sodas make up for some interesting moments in Paathshaala.

A hapless story of the modern-day education system trying to commercialise the medium by introducing reality shows to make stars out of students falls flat right from the first frame.



Using the concept of child labour prevalent in television, the film highlights the sorry situation of a school whose students seem to have no mind of their own! Dated and morose in style, the film just goes around in circles, instead of making a point.

What's hot: Saurabh Shukla as the conniving school manager Mr Sharma, who loves taking jabs at students and sniggers at every opportunity of passing a rude remarks is colourful.

What's not: Paathshaala crumbles under its own weight. Like a house of cards it starts crashing down even before you settle down in your seat.

Everything from the sets, to the costumes and dialogues look outdated. As opposed to today's kids who use iPods and tweet from their Blackberrys, this Saraswati Vidya Mandir has students who are unreal and corny.

Showing an outcast as a kid with some black paint and badly stuck make-up on his face is just hilarious!

Scenes depicting the effect of reality shows on today's children are so hammed up that they serve no purpose.

Among the cast, Shahid looks sedated and the colour and length of his hair keeps shifting in a mysterious manner. Ayesha Takia has nothing new to do than fit in those clothes and down a few bottles of glycerin.

Nana Patekar's unending speech in the climax will make you start liking your own school principal no matter how strict he was!

The rest of the cast doesn't have much to do other than give uneasy close-ups in very bad lighting. Neither entertaining nor socially relevant the film struggles to keep you interested.

What to do: Skip this Paathshaala, instead arrange a reunion with your school mates, it would be more fun than sitting through this shoddy affair.


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