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Bend It Like Beckham
***
Cinema Releases - April 12, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 113
minutes. Directed by Gurinder Chadha. Written by Paul Mayeda Berges, Guljit
Bindra, Gurinda Chadha. Starring Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan
Rhys-Meyers, Anupam Kher, Kulvinder Ghir, Shaheen Khan, Archie Panjabi, Shaznay
Lewis, Frank Harper, Juliet Stevenson.
"Bend It Like Beckham" thinks it's
about a girl realising her passion for football, when it's really about two
girls who refuse to admit their homosexuality. I am not a critic who looks
for sexual subtexts in everything I see, but there's definitely something
going on here, intentional or not. Ironic, how this movie teaches us to follow
our urges while refusing to realise its own.
Parminder Nagra stars as an 18-year old girl from
London who supports Manchester United and does her best to stay clear of
her parents' traditional Sikh lifestyle. She rolls eyes at her sister, a
trendy pipsqueak who minces around with fashion-conscious buddies and whispers
behind their backs, "Bitch! Why did she have to go and get a dress like that?
I can't wear mine now!" She tries to watch footie in the comfort of her bedroom,
but keeps getting interrupted by her mum, who barges in and declares, "I
can't believe that your sister is planning a wedding, and you're sitting
in here watching these skinhead boys!"
Nagra spends afternoons with male friends, running
around the park and kicking a ball. Keira Knightley, who plays for a local
girls' team, notices her skills and invites her to join. The team is going
places, and it starts going much quicker once the talented Nagra gets on
the field... but Nagra's parents don't approve of her playing football, and
so she has to keep it a secret. As you will have guessed, the movie is a
comedy that follows Nagra's attempts to convince her family to accept her
unconventional choice of lifestyle.
Obviously, this plot could be taken as an extended
metaphor for coming out of the closet, but you don't see me accusing Billy
Elliot of being gay. There's more here. Nagra and Knightley have pictures
of sportsmen and butch women all over their rooms. Nagra has a scar on her
leg that makes her anxious about wearing shorts, which is clearly supposed
to symbolise that she's carrying around things she doesn't want to reveal.
And, quite simply, Nagra and Knightley relate to each other with a clear
sense of longing and attraction. Consider the instant intimacy of their
friendship, and how it is characterised by both fascination and apprehension.
Look at Knightley's eyes in the early scenes of the picture, where she jogs
past Nagra and gazes at her with palpable sexuality. I felt more of an attraction
between these girls than I felt between Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly
in "Personal Best", and that was a pretty convincing movie.
"Bend It Like Beckham" refuses to act on its
implications. It is so dishonest, in fact, that it dispels our suspicions
by mocking them through the character of Knightley's mother, who starts to
muse that her daughter might be a lesbian, and comes off as paranoid and
harebrained. There's also a subplot whereby Nagra and Knightley both fall
for their coach, who is played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. At first the possibility
is left open that the girls are projecting their feelings onto Meyers to
distract themselves from their true nature, but then a romance really does
blossom between Nagra and Meyers, despite the fact that not a stage of the
relationship rings true.
Nagra is wonderful in the lead role -- she expresses
emotion through a style of being, rather than through easy tones of voice
or facial expressions, and is convincing as someone who feels different in
some fundamental way. She simply does not respond to the interests and customs
of those surrounding her, and like most creative people seems to be harbouring
a feeling that she's not only looking for something alternative, but is the
only sane person in an insane world. Knightley, the co-star, has a clear
screen presence -- yes, she bears a resemblance to Winona Ryder, but Ryder
plays characters with a disturbed, confused or even suicidal edge, and Knightley
is loud and bold, breathing life into her character in a quite thrilling
way.
Furthermore, the scenes involving Nagra's family
find truthful humour -- the filmmakers proceed with confidence, exaggerating
behaviour into fairly broad histrionics without going so over the top that
they cheapen their material. Shaheen Khan, the actress playing Nagra's mother,
spends most of the movie screaming things like, "What's the good in knowing
how to run around kicking a ball if you don't know how to make round chapatis?"
It's funny because it's truthful, not because it's wacky.
"Bend It Like Beckham" works more than adequately
as a comedy about an Indian girl who wants to play football, because of the
wonderful performances and the fact that the family backdrop is not treated
as the formula gimmick that it might have in a lesser movie. This is filmmaking
far above the level of "There's Only One Jimmy Grimble". The fact that it
makes us consider implications beyond the events onscreen is impressive.
Still, there's something missing. What's the point of capturing the spark
of two wonderful girls if that spark is going to be ignored? This could have
been a great film if it had been courageous enough to follow things through
to their natural destination.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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