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Anita & Me
*1/2
Cinema Releases - November 22, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. UK.
93 minutes. Directed by Metin Huseyin. Written by Meera Syal; based on her
novel. Starring Chandeep Uppal, Anna Brewster, Ayesha Dharker, Sanjeev Bhaskar,
Kathy Burke, Lynne Redgrave, Mark Williams, Max Beesley, Meera Syal, Zohra
Segal, Kabir Bedi, Christine Tremarco.
Maybe it worked as a book. Maybe on the page,
this material really did manage to get into the head of a naïve young
girl and her obsessions, and offer truthful comedy and observation about
trying to figure out growing up. I never read the book, but lots of people
liked it, and hey, they must have their reasons.
"Anita & Me" has been scripted
by Meera Syal, the writer of the source material, and yet as a film it's
nothing but a messy and irritating jumble of a few reliable formulas. There's
the kid growing up in a quirky household and learning how to form a creative
personality, a lot of cute ethnic comedy, and one of those rose-tinted
friendships that somehow changed everything one season way back
when.
The setting is a small Midlands village in the
1970s, where Meena (Chandeep Uppal) is an 11-year old Indian girl getting
desperately sick of being the only Asian around. Her movie exists to show
her doing a lot of whining about how unsatisfied she is, how her parents
don't understand her, how the girl named Anita down the road was amazing,
and how they had great adventures she'd never forget.
I don't normally mind movies like this: "My Dog
Skip" brought a lump to my throat, fer chrissake. But there's nothing for
us to buy into here, and impatience sets in pretty quick. On a fundamental
level, it's hard to understand just how Syal hopes for us to identify with
her protagonist; yeah, she feels stifled by her family, and she's battling
racism both spoken and implied, but she also seems to want to be unsatisfied.
The kid toys with the idea of wanting to grow up and be a blind writer; all
the great writers have diseases and afflictions, she muses. She goes on about
having unique undiscovered talent, even though there are few things more
annoying than people so obsessively convinced of their own ability that they
talk of little else. She gives her parents a hard time when really she should
not; they feed her curry, and she moans that all the other kids in town get
fish fingers. "Why don't we have gnomes in our garden?" she snaps at her
mother. The response is a beautiful one: "Because we have earth and plants,
we have things that are alive, instead of a clutter." Meena just sits there
and tuts.
Yeah, I know, I know -- it's not that easy to
have a positive outlook as a kid, and often you take things for granted that
are special, and hey, I wasn't that unlike Meena when I was her age. It's
no fun being of Irish and Indian descent when you're going to British primary
school, and I remember getting into fights with my parents because I found
it so much easier to concentrate on what they didn't give me than what they
did.
Looking back, such moods are those of a spoiled
brat. Meena exists in a constant state of resentment and unsatisfaction,
and spins it to make herself sound witty and deep. Again, I know, I know
-- she learns to appreciate things more by the end of the picture. But even
then, she only changes to a certain extent, and it's hard to get involved
in the character on anything but a theoretical level before that begins to
happen.
Meena's parents are played in performances of
truth and power by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Ayesha Dharker, so much so that we
wish they were the ones giving the narration. Look at the scene where Meena
notes that other kids' dads are war heroes with medals. Bhaskar gets a rueful
smile and says, "We fought. We fought poverty, we fought the British, we
fought those people who got through the short cuts. Nobody gave us medals."
Does Meena get a clue, and have a moment of sober respect? No, she sits rolling
her eyes.
As if the content of the voice-over and dialogue
were not bad enough, the sound design puts a focus on voices -- thick Brummie
voices, that are somehow nasal and high-pitched at the same time, and penetrate
the skull like a psychopath's drill. If I ever hear "Yow, this is bostin!"
again, I may have to tear all my hair out at once.
I have no idea what we're supposed to make of
the film's central relationship. Anita, played by Anna Brewster, is a blonde
bomshell who struts around town with a shiny red coat and an expression that
just doesn't give one -- she's underlined as The Exciting Town Bad Girl,
and that is about as far as the filmmakers go in fleshing her out, other
than to give her long stares into the distance suggesting that she's seen
hard times, man, and she knows what's goin' on. The supposedly special friendship
essentially consists of Meena following Anita with awe and Anita ignoring
Meena, until the final scene, where the cool girl gives the main character
a hug and says, "Yow are dead bostin, chick!"
The visual design of the movie gives us big clues
as to how little thought went into the production. The photography captures
everything in slightly reddish, brownish filters that are supposed to remind
us of 8mm home movies, even though the movement of the camera is that of
a regular feature film. It's a technique used in commercials to get a slightly
retro feel, and it suggests that the filmmakers' memories of the '70s come
solely from tacky television.
And yet there are good things about "Anita &
Me". Even though the parents' scenes are rarely seen in the right light,
the characters are touching nonetheless. Zohra Segal is a broad comic
show-stopper as Meena's grandmother, an old woman who can combine wisdom
with a wicked and frank sense of humour, because she no longer sees any reason
to do anything but get to the point. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Syal herself
have interesting and surprisingly convincing supporting roles. The film's
big problem is its determination to focus on the least interesting character
onscreen at the most talentless and obnoxious period in her life, and present
it rather than learn from it.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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