Mio figlio il fanatico

My Son the Fanatic was a surprizing treat. I never heard of it before renting at blockbuster last night. I don't think it ever played in Toronto theatres. Never the less I must applaud at Hanif Kureshi's yet again bold and honest attempt at highlighting a recent phenomenon in the South Asian community: the son going "holier than thou" on the family. This film touched me personally because in my case the opposite happened; my father turned fanatic muslim on me. Hanif Qureshi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" is one of my favourite films of all time and after "Budha of Suburbia" I fell in love with this brilliant man and his work. "My Son" is a lot less shocking but still weaves it's way through the father and son conflict elegantly and I am shocked at how blind the Oscar nominators are when it comes to Om Puri's brilliant acting! This is the first film portraying South Asians where the wife has some personality and actually speaks out so I see her as a mother, a wife and a woman that I know because she exists in my community. She is dull and fat and stuck in her little world within the four walls of her home. I dislike her but I know her. The subtle emotions and body language of this lower middle-class family might not be fully understood by a non-south asian critic and that is why some find it moves slowly sometimes. I could not agree with Earnest Hardy more when he says this film (and others by the writer) "endorse a morality of compassion". I think that is the only moral value worth pushing!

This is a great film, however I must comment that I have found many foreign films listed as "comedy" or "humorous" when in fact they are poignant, disturbing and brilliant (thank you netflix and blockbuster). "No Man's Land" and "Happy Times" are fantastic movies that are incorrectly labeled as comedy, and "My Son the Fanatic" is regrettably categorized as comedy as well. The reality of each character's life is vivid and heart breaking. I felt so uncomfortable witnessing Parvez struggle with his peers, the German, his wife and son, and Bettina. Coupled with "My Beautiful Laundrette" you get a taste of immigrant life in Britain.

It's a rare treat to see a film character of such complexity. His story, a love story, is as homely and real as a wound.

Om Puri's character is not to be forgotten and Griffith gives the searingly intelligent performance I have come to expect of her. Kurtha, as the son, is very poor, his delivery stilted and amateurish, and an outdoorsy scene with the two lovers is cinematographically squandered; otherwise, nothing but raves for this one. Also takes the prize for sexiest and most heartbreaking love scene in movie history.

I was pleasantly surprised when I just saw "My Son the Fanatic" (I write this as the video rewinds!). I'm quite averse to watching gratuitous violence and listening to obscenities, and I looked askance at the cover jacket of this video at my public library, thinking it may be akin to films like "East is East", "Sammy and Rosie", and "My Beautiful Laundrette". Like those films, this one explores English lower middle class South Asian immigrants, but I found "My Son the Fanatic" to be much more palatable - and in fact endearing and more interesting - than the others.

The story is of Parvez (played by Om Puri), a Pakistani who has immigrated to England 25 or 30 years ago. He is a taxi driver and is very proud of his son, Farid (Akbar Kurtha), who appears to be in his mid-20s. The film opens with Parvez, his wife Minoo (Gopi Desai), and Farid all meeting the family of Madelaine (Sarah-Jane Potts), Farid's girlfriend. Madelaine's father is chief of police, and Parvez is enthusiastic for the marriage presumably because the young couple love each other, but also, it seems, because of the status of the chief inspector.

Parvez is a hard-working, kind, and friendly man. Some of his customers are prostitutes, and he honorably befriends one, Bettina (Rachel Griffiths), maintaining a respectful and supportive platonic relationship.

Life is turned upside down when Farid abandons his engagement and school when religious fundamentalism beckons him. This forms the framework for the climax and resolution of the film.

Om Puri, consistent with his reputation, puts in an excellent and believable performance of a parent trying to provide a good life for his family and looking to harness qualities from both his traditional and adopted cultures. Though she seems to be stuck at home, Minoo is more dimensional than other S.Asian mothers are often portrayed to be. I think more could have been done to have developed the son's character, and Bettina had a radiance, charm, and optimism that made it hard to believe her to be a prostitute.

"My Son the Fanatic" is a film that I enjoyed seeing. It's neither uplifting nor depressing, but the story is interesting and believable, and Om Puri's credible acting is a delight to see.

A Pakistani taxi driver in Britain (Om Puri) is plagued by a bad cosmic joke that seems co-written by Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis: his son, rather than becoming an unrecognizable assimilate, turns into a jihad-embracing Muslim fundamentalist. At the same time, the warmth of a white hooker (Rachel Griffiths) beckons, to the chagrin and hissing tongues of his local countrymen.

The writer Hanif Kureishi's onetime Benetton smugness has mellowed into ripe colors of rue, mockery and regret as he eases into middle age, and this adaptation of his short story is a lovely, surprisingly beautifully shot, sneakily haunting small movie. The dialogue sometimes has a novelish explicitness, and the performances are variable--Puri sometimes drifts into F. Murray Abraham terrain, but he has an amazing, craggy, pain-absorbent face. But the movie has a real subject: the ways in which postmod culture-hybridity isn't always a rainbow-colored day at the beach. And the warmth amid desperation of the central relationship suggests what Neil Jordan's MONA LISA might have been without the smoky-sax romanticism.

The sad thing about seeing this movie was that, after Miramax gave the movie one of their unceremonious heave-hos (par for the course for their good movies), the audience, unblanketed by buzz, hype, an aura of hot-ticket, reacted as shruggingly as critics seem to have. Too bad: MY SON THE FANATIC evokes the sweet, melancholy fatalism of seventies pictures like THE NICKEL RIDE and STRAIGHT TIME. It has the atmosphere of an overcast crime picture without the crime. And it has at least a handful of real, breathing people in it--as rare an occurrence these days as a flight of the dodo.