A gathering of the clan for an arranged marriage in modern Delhi. You won't be alone if you have a hard time telling who's who and how they're related: even one of the invitees voices the complaint. It's a standard comic situation (Father of the Bride, etc.), almost a can't-miss one, and the Punjabi exoticism goes far to compensate for all the conventionality. It may not, however, go so far as to compensate for the belated dark turn down the side street of molestation: a new comic convention, but no less a convention, now that every TV sitcom feels obligated to Address Important Issues. The conflict between the old ways and the new, too, is standard for Eastern cinema (Ozu, etc.), although Mira Nair's scrambling catch-as-catch-can camerawork -- 16mm blown up to 35 -- leaves no doubt, for even a moment, where her own sympathies lie. The movie comes to a somewhat premature climax, albeit a moving one, at the cathartic celebratory dance the night before the ceremony. It would all feel a lot more barren, though, without the delightful figure of the weaselly wedding planner ("Ten minutes," he promises, "exactly and approximately"), with his polka-dot scarf, his leisure suits, his calculator wristwatch, his clip-on pager. By himself, this inch-by-inch social climber embodies the strengths and weaknesses of the whole: complacently formulaic yet infused with a palpable humanity. However large a laughingstock, he is not denied his own romantic yearnings and his inhibiting self-awareness. Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Vasundhara Das, Parvin Dabas, Vijay Raaz. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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