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Bend It Like Beckham
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha subverts the traditional masculine clichés of the football movie with this confident and highly enjoyable comedy about a young Asian girl trying to emulate her sporting hero
The parents of Hounslow teenager Jess (Nagra) want her to concentrate on her studies, to learn how to cook traditional Indian food, and to marry a respectable young man, just like her soon-to-be-wed older sister Pinky (Panjabi). Jess however is far more passionate about playing football, and is asked by a fellow schoolgirl Jules (Knightley) to come and join the local womens's team the Hounslow Harriers. Their coach Joe (Rhys Meyers) reckons that they both have the talent to succeed in the game. But Jess's mum (Khan) and dad (Kher) ban their daughter from attending training, plus the friendship of the girls suffers when they both fall for the same man, Joe... As with her earlier films Bhaji On The Beach (1993) and What's Cooking? (2000), Chadha uses comedy to explore social, racial and familial issues. Here football is used as a metaphor to investigate what it means to be young, female and self-confident in contemporary Britain. While Jess is expected by her elders to conform to the model of traditional Indian femininity, Jules' preference for footy over dresses provokes real anxiety in her own mother Paula (Stevenson), who's alarmed by the pin-ups of butch American female soccer-players on her daughter's bedroom wall. From the initial dream sequence to the utopian resolution, there's a sense of joyful exuberance - a rare commodity in British cinema - coursing through Bend it Like Beckham. The irreverent humour co-exists alongside a palpable affection for the characters: Jess' father could easily have been reduced to a blinkered patriarch, yet we're made aware that it is his own experience of racism in sport that makes him so fearful of his daughter's career choice. And alongside the spirited contributions of Nagra and Knightley, Bend It like Beckham also benefits from some intelligent counter-casting, with both a brassy Stevenson and a down-to-earth Rhys Meyers playing refreshingly against type. Verdict Unfolding in contemporary multi-cultural London, Bend It Like Beckham is a comedy with heart and substance. |
