Chutney Popcorn

"Chutney Popcorn" takes on major issues-- lesbian identity, cultural identity, and intergenerational differences. However, I could never believe in the basic situation. This, in turn, prevented me from becoming involved with the characters and their plights.

The protagonist, Reena, played by Director Nisha Ganatra, is a henna artist in a beauty parlor. Her partner, Lisa--I missed her occupation--is played by Jill Hennessy.

Ms. Hennessy's great beauty unbalances the plot. We never understand why these two partners love each other, and what there is about Reena that makes Lisa stay with her through the ups and downs of the fairly predictable plot.

Several other lesbian women hover around the couple, but their place is the film was never clear to me.

Any couple has difficulties in their relationship. No doubt--even in New York City--same-gender couples have more difficulties, and culturally-diverse couples have still more problems.

I give the director credit for focussing on these problems. However, I don't think she really explored the problems in depth. Basically, she placed them before us on the screen, and then solved them for us.

This is a film that I wish had been better. I believe it is worth seeing, but not worth a special effort.

I liked this movie a lot. It depicted the life of the second-generation immigration children in New York City well enough to feel for them. These are people who have no permanent roots as director Ganatra says: "These people don't feel Really at home in India because they are too American, but they don't feel really at home in America because they are Indian." Now combine this with lesbianism and surrogate motherhood and you could get a very hefty movie, one that probably would have ultimately just made fun if itself.

But on the contrary this is not the fact with this film. It is a very warm funny depiction of the troubles Ganatra's character is going through. It is funny, witty and it has a fell-good ending.

The acting is way better than average, especially by the sister (Sakina Jaffrey) and the mother (Madhur Jaffrey) of Ganatra's character. The rest of the cast is fine, too.

I was fortunate enough to be present at a screening of this feature with afterwards a Q&A session with Director Nisha Ganatra and Writer Susan Carnival. In this session Ganatra explained that this film was kept light-hearted on purpose, they knew that they could make this into this incredibly heavy piece, but they chose not too. This shines a whole different light on the movie.

A fine film, see it.

8/10

Shout out to production and location management on this film. This movie is a little gem among similar fare with so many diverse outlooks that every scene gives you a nugget of character. The colors make this film really pop; along with Nisha's use of visual metaphor melting together seamlessly.

However, Nisha is no actor and the ADR can be pretty....uncanny at times. Like "The Room" levels of bad dubbing of lines that can break focus for many viewers.

Firstly, it's a refreshing film worth watching. Indian/Lesbian twist really adds spice on an old rebellious child eloping plot.

I have some problems with some minority themed films. In these films, somehow gay/lesbian always had a brief dancing with heterosexuality, and minority character has to have conflict with mother culture by dating white guy/gal. What's up with that? Otherwise audience won't "get it"? It's almost "pandering" to mass audience.

But then others might say "otherwise it might not worked". It really depend what the author is trying to make, a "product" or an art statement or whatever is in between.

ok, i have some preparation for this film before seeing it in that i am a white guy married to an Indian woman, have gay friends, and i have an affinity for independent films, but this film has great characters and lots of charm. so, it sort of feels like an independent film in that it doesn't feel glossy all over and the characters are more offbeat, those are plusses in my book. it is a very human movie about the experiences of life with other people. my wife really liked it too. if you liked this movie, another really good non-traditional Canadian-Indian movie is Masala (not Mississippi Masala) from 1991 by Srinivas Krishna.