Susan Granger’s review of “Bride and Prejudice” (Miramax Films)
British director Gurinder Chadha transposes Jane Austen’s astutely observed portrait of English society at the turn of the 19th century to modern-day India, giving her timeless dissection of social mores a playful, distinctly Bollywood twist. So Austen’s middle-class Bennets becomes the Bakshis of Amritsar in Punjab. They’re a prosperous farm family with four marriageable daughters. Former “Miss World” Aishwarya Rai makes her English-language debut as the tartly spirited Lalita, the second oldest, who is drawn into an adversarial relationship with arrogant Will Darcy (Martin Henderson), a wealthy American hotel chain heir, while being courted by an Indian-born entrepreneur (Nitin Ganatra) in Los Angeles. Caught between romantic love and social duty, her dilemma spans three continents and is set to gaudy, bawdy Bollywood-style song and dance with a mixed Indian, British and American cast, including an Ashanti show-stopper and Marsha Mason as Darcy’s snooty mother. Perhaps Gurinder Chadha is best known for her cross-cultural soccer comedy “Bend It Like Beckham,” but several of her previous films, like “Bhaji on the Beach,” have also been satires of South Asians living in Britain. Here, collaborating with her screenwriter husband, Paul Meyeda Berges, she pokes lighthearted fun at the class differences that underlie Austen’s comedy of manners. Yet only a superbly talented actress/singer/dancer like Aishwarya Rai could get away with lyrics like, “I just wanna man who’ll give me some back/ Who’ll talk to me and not to my rack!” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bride and Prejudice” is an impudent, exuberant 8, recommended particularly for Austen aficionados and fans of bright, bouncy Indian films.
