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What interests Gurinder?
The acclaimed director of Bend It Like Beckham earns more praise at Toronto
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Arthur J Pais
"I have always been interested in marginalised people," says Gurinder Chadha, one of the hottest directors in Britain today.
Years ago, Chadha, a documentary filmmaker for BBC, had known there was more to England than the aristocrats in Ismail Merchant and James Ivory films like The Remains Of The Day. She also knew there was another England than the one seen in gritty films like Alfie.
There was, for instance, a vibrant Indian community, and it offered wonderful, at times sad, but always intriguing, stories.
So the Kenya-born Chadha, whose family moved to England in 1951, set out to make Bhaji On The Beach, an affectionate look at a group of desi women who discover themselves while on a picnic. The medium-size hit brought her a raft of awards, including the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Newcomer to British Cinema in 1994.
She had earned a name for herself as a chronicler of South Asians, thanks mainly to her 30-minute documentary in 1989, I'm English But... about young desis in England who were not listening to legendary Indian singers like Kishore Kumar or Lata Mangeshkar, but to acid Bhangra and inventing their own Punjabi Bhangra and desi rap.
In 1990, she made a 11-minute documentary Nice Arrangement about a desi wedding in England.
Twelve years later, Chadha is one of the hottest directors in Britain with her third feature film, Bend It Like Beckham, a feisty film about a desi girl who wants to play soccer.
The film, which has grossed over $18 million in the United Kingdom, more than three times the gross of Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, is shaping into a formidable international hit.
In Australia, it was at the second spot at the box-office for over three weeks and grossed a neat $6 million. This is almost as much as M Night Shyamalan's Signs. In South Africa, it grossed about $1.3 million. In India, according to producer Deepak Nayar, it made about $1.5 million.
The film is slowly opening in other countries and will be released in America early next year by Fox Searchlight. It was voted the second most popular film at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, which screened about 250 feature films, including crowd-pleasers like Spirited Away and Moonlight Mile.
The director claims she does not regret the fact that it took her nearly a decade to score a big hit. She is proud of every move she has made, especially with What's Cooking?, a story of various families that unfold on Thanksgiving Day, the most important family event in America. The film does not have an Indian family but it focuses on African American, Latin, Vietnamese and Jewish families in Los Angeles.
The well-received film has an ensemble cast of some of Americas most talented actresses, Alfred Woodward, Joan Chen, Kyra Sedgwick, Julianna Margulies and Mercedes Ruehl. It grossed a modest $2.5 million worldwide and recorded good video and television sales. It was the first collaborative project between Chadha and her husband Paul Mayeda Berges. It opened the Sundance Film Festival in 2000 and earned Chadha the London Film Critics' Award for Best British Director.
What has been it like working with Berges, a Japanese American based in Los Angeles? "The proof is in the two films that have been released," Chadha says, adding there are plenty more collaborative efforts to come. In an earlier interview, she had said that while he helped her understand America (at least, Los Angeles), she got him to know more about the South Asian communities in England.
Berges claims that he was inspired by Bhaji On The Beach that opened up the notions of what British society was exactly like. He wanted to create a film that would highlight multicultural Los Angles. Collaborating with Gurinder was great, he says, "because she brought fresh insights only an outsider could to things that I might have taken for granted."
Chadha says she approached the project from an European perspective. "You may call it a subversive approach," she says. She wanted to make a compact film that eschewed the kind of melodrama that one sees in standard American films.
She had another important reason to make What's Cooking? When she was in Los Angeles to promote her debut film, she was astounded at the diversity in the city. "I don't recall seeing it in any Hollywood film," she says. Either they showed too much violence or an affluent Los Angeles," she continues. "You have no idea how huge the Latino or Asian presence in LA is [by] living in London and watching Hollywood films or television shows."
That is when she wanted to make a film "about the real LA". She adds, "Nothing gives me more satisfaction than moving people from the margins of the frame to its centre."
She resisted the idea of making at least one of the families Indian. "For one, Indians are not that visible in Los Angeles," she says. She hastens to add the emotions and drama the families undergo is not far different from the experiences of an Indian family. "In a way, I see them all as Indian families," she adds.
Nayar, who has served as an executive producer for some of the most fiercely independent and creative filmmakers in Hollywood, including Wim Wenders, recalls meeting Chadha when she was working on What's Cooking? "I was fascinated by her energy and commitment to making good films about the minorities," he says. "We kept in touch and when she showed me the script for Bend It Like Beckham, I knew this was the film I wanted to make with her."
Chadha says she prefers the words 'marginalised people' to the 'minorities'. "I am always interested in writing and directing works about marginalised people in England or America or, for that matter, India," she says. This interest made her accept filming Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's acclaimed novel The Mistress Of Spices about an Indian woman with healing powers who lives in Oakland, one of the poorest cities in America.
Chadha recalls how she began dreaming of Bend It Like Beckham in a London pub four years ago during the World Cup series. "The way men were crying when England was doing poorly surprised me a lot," she says. "I had never realised English men could cry! I had only seen the country like this when Lady Diana had died. I caught the football bug and thought wouldn't it be great to take all this energy and put two girls in the middle of it all?"
Her friend Guljit Bindra helped her write the story about an Indian girl who idolises David Beckham, and an English girl who idolises American soccer star Mia Hamm. "The film would be about two girls desperate to play football and about the people who say they can't because it is not feminine thing to do," says Chadha. The movie was a comedy, but it also had a serious edge to it.
"I want to know about various cultures and take my experiences to the mainstream," she explains. "I hope to do that with whichever country I make a film on and with characters different to most people's expectations."
She told BBC recently that she introduced an English family and the backdrop of the sister's wedding "to make it [the film] more commercial and feminine."
Chadha, who grew up in Southall and West London, says the film is partly autobiographical. The relationship between Jesse (the Indian girl who wants to play soccer) and her father "is very similar to my relationship with my dad".
Her film is not about breaking rules, she adds. "We came up with the title for two reasons --- Beckham's ability to defy gravity and bend the ball the way he does. The title also works as an excellent metaphor for the film as the girls 'bend' the rules than 'break' them so they can get what they want."
Rather than show the young girls in conflict with the parents all the time, she wanted to show a story about parents and children working out their problems and differences. She recalls how her own parents, especially her father, dismissed what friends and relatives said and let her decide about her own career. She also feels that the film is not just another Asian British film but a mainstream British film because the issues it raises resonate with the mainstream.
Chadha says she also made the film as a vehicle for British Asian actors who did not get an opportunity to show off their talents on the big screen. Parminder K Nagra (Jesse) has been in several television shows like Goodness Gracious Me and the offbeat play Oh Sweet Sita. She got her first film break in Chadha's film.
"I had her in mind when I began writing the screenplay," Chadha says. "She has an innocence onscreen that is completely arresting and she worked harder on preparing for the role than any actor I had ever worked with."
Chadha is now thinking of making a film in India. Incidentally, Chadha was supposed to direct London (starring Dharmendra and Sunny Deol) but the film was abandoned because of creative differences.
"I am open to collaboration," she says. "I have received much interest from the Hindi film industry --- both in terms of talent and financers --- who want to work with me on my kind of films with my vision."
Among the scripts Berges and she have developed is Are You Experienced?, which they describe as a wild road flick about young backpackers in India. "It is also a love story," she adds with a chuckle.
Also Read:
The Bend It Like Beckham bash
A Field day with Gurinder Chadha
Bend It Like Beckham. A preview.
Bend it like Kher