I was doing my regular Jackson Heights browse, taste, walk around, have-a-drink-with-Ali, check out brothers, weekly tour. The movie store Aunti-ji who believes that I have an "off-beat taste" (her exact words) in desi movies called me over and said that she had a new film for me: "French Fries and Curry". She believed it was a local desi film, dealing with women's issues. She had not seen it herself.
As you all know, since American Desi, American Chai, ABCD, and other such brilliant endeavors I have been begging for redemption. So French arrives as a welcome change from the ragged story line: ABCD guy is running away from his roots, goes to college, falls in love with another ABCD girl who is connected to her roots, and hey presto! he accepts his ethnic origins rooted in temples, dung, and mosquito bites and marries her to consummate natural hetero marital impulses. French has a different story. It is not about ABCD guys waiting to be saved by their ethnic-chic girlfriends. It is about three women, two desi FOB girls, and one "American" (white) girl finding love and friendship and happiness. The film was shot on a budget lower than the Blair Witch Project's. As such it dispenses with the notion that bad cinema needs Hollywood props.
The dialogue is peppered with heart wrenching lines about arranged marriages and position of women in desi families. Teesta – knows as a trendy “T” - walks out on her suitor telling him that she can never make him happy in his house since she is a woman with dreams of owning her own publishing company. Sounds radical na? Wait till you see the incredible acting that goes with it. She is also horrified when her white friend Mark asks her to go for dinner with him. She shouts in, what is supposed to be, amazement: "Are you okay? Are you asking me out on a date?". At the same time Sheri's relationship with her live in boyfriend-husband (we really don't know cause we are told both - he is referred to as her husband in one scene and then boyfriend in another) is falling apart. Sheri seems to be falling for Abhi who is a hard working dim-wit owner of a coffee shop. He spends a total of one minute and nineteen seconds with her (and another 5 on the phone) and in a typical Indian way of love at first sight, he proposes marriage. Sheri's white American sensibilities are shattered since Brian, her white American boyfriend-husband neither wants marriage, nor children. In fact Brian doesn't like children. In the first scene we meet Brian, he is appalled by the Indian guy - Abhi, who is to steal Sheri's heart later - with kid in the supermarket. He says something about "these Indians" who have children by the age of twenty, and by their fourtieth birthday have a "brood". Sheri is horrified and asks him whether he hates children. The more appropriate question would have been: "Do you hate Indians?". Followed by: You Raicst Asshole!.
Deep psychological issues haunt our protagonist whose parents divorced when she was young. She is, in a typical model minority myth manner, a very successful software engineer now. She is wooed by Pankaj Malhotra who lives in her apartment building. Malhotra, if we need any reminder, is also a techie. In his circular love letter, she finally finds the father she lost to Malyalam literature. Pankaj, like all the other characters in the movie - if it can be called that - is uni-dimensional. He wants to get married, and marry he will. There are lots of scenes with ducks, doves and lakes with enchanting music in the background, I was constantly reminded of Beliefnet's biblical phrases appearing against different natural wonders.
If movies were to be rated according to literary icons then "French" would be the unknown step brother of the unknown person who penned "some love one, some love two, I love one, that is you". "French" makes American Desi seem like the Tolstoy of modern cinema. Please watch it when you have progressive desi friends over. Huddle together, drink some beer, and laugh away.
