|
Deepa's celebration of Bollywood poised for career first hit
Mixed reviews may not come in the way of Bollywood/Hollywood's BO success
|
Arthur J Pais
With mostly upbeat reviews and dozens of stories on Lisa Ray --- who was described by Toronto Star as the 'jaw-droppingly gorgeous', Deepa Mehta's Bollywood/Hollywood was screened at 35 Canadian movie houses last Friday.
For the first time in her decade-long career as director, Deepa Mehta is poised for a potential hit. The romantic comedy grossed about Canadian $460,000 (US$310,000) on about 40 Canadian screens in three days, following its October 25 opening. The movie was at No 26 on Variety's Box Office Wrap.
Even if the film, which cost about $1.5 million ($1 million), depletes by about 50 per cent next week and the weeks thereafter, it could end up with about $1.2 million in Canada. With American, British and Indian openings in the next two months, it could become a profitable venture. Mehta's Earth grossed about half a million dollars.
Shot in Toronto, the movie opened the Canadian Perspective at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it had several sold-out shows. It received a tepid review from the influential publication Variety. It faulted Mehta for not investing the film with a light touch.
The film is about a young man (Rahul Khanna) who doesn't have much regard for desi culture but who nevertheless tries to please his heritage-conscious elders by getting a stranger to pretend to be his Indian fiancιe. But the imposter turns out to be a golden-hearted woman. Now, the young man should try to make a sense of the mess he has got himself in.
While the film received two and half stars out of four from The Globe and Mail whose headline proclaimed 'Fusion Fare That's Not Spicy Enough', the Toronto Star gave it three stars. In Halifax, the Daily News gave the movie a favourable review that ran with the headline, 'A Loving Tribute to Guilty Pleasures'.
Mehta wanted the movie to be a refreshingly different kind of Canadian product. 'Important filmmakers like Atom Egoyan are very serious, a reaction to Hollywood,' she told International Herald Tribune, recently. 'So the ground becomes fertile for somebody like me, who has one foot in each culture and who tries to make two tongues talk as one. This is what intrigued me.'
At least one reviewer felt other Canadian filmmakers could learn from the movie. 'Canadian films have, sometimes deservedly, the reputation for being dour, lesson-filled diatribes, full of bad weather and depressing sex,' wrote Daily News. The Halifax newspaper added: 'Bollywood/Hollywood, set firmly in the blander parts of suburban Ontario, is completely Canadian, yet not. It's delightful, airy and forgettable in the good way of real, fragile entertainment. It lifts us up in a bubble, then disappears.'
Many reviewers agreed on one point: Mehta had lovingly captured the polyglot culture of Toronto. The Globe and Mail, in fact, compared the film favourably to Woody Allen's Manhattan as a celluloid tribute to a city.
But it faulted Mehta for not successfully translating a potentially witty and engaging script into an engrossing movie. 'In the end, the result is disappointing,' the review complained. 'And because of your rooting interest, the disappointment somehow feels personal --- like watching the home team lose a close one.'
It also said that Srinivas Krishna had produced better results with a similar theme of cultural clashes, 'in a much underappreciated film called Masala.'
Mehta's movie could have 'worked brilliantly', if only some of its musical numbers were 'were sparked by Astaire's dancing magic or Baz Luhrmann's camera wizardry,' the newspaper said. 'But they aren't. The cast is competent, yet far from magical. Ditto for Mehta's direction. It's just too sedentary, weighing the picture down precisely when it should soar.'
In Halifax, Daily News wrote: 'It takes a particular talent to be able to parody something you love, while retaining a feeling of affection and respect for it. Deepa Mehta's Bollywood/Hollywood both mocks and celebrates the conventions and spectacle of the Bollywood musical and the Hollywood romantic comedy. It's an extremely silly, extremely loving tribute to guilty pleasures, and a reminder not to feel so guilty about them.'
Calling the film, 'effervescently nonsensical new movie,' The Toronto Star said it succeeded in celebrating Toronto. 'This must be the only made-in-Toronto movie to feature a propulsively-choreographed dance number shot against a CN Tower-spiked skyline,' it wrote. 'Conceptually, Bollywood/Hollywood may offer one of the more accurate portrayals of Toronto's distinctive cultural circumstances than you'll find in most movies made here.'
Mehta is gratified the film has opened widely and with encouraging numbers. "This is the musical comedy I always wanted to make," she told rediff.com. "The film itself is a celebration of Bollywood cinema which I grew up loving a lot. It opens Bollywood to the world. While it stays true to the Bollywood convention, it is also a movie that mainstream can embrace."
Mehta took up the film also a relaxation therapy, she said at a press conference during the festival. The Hindu traditionalists' protests that led to the shutting down of her movie Water, pushed her into making something that was light-hearted, romantic and funny. The new film is also a tribute to the immigrant Indian community in Canada.
"It shows, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding and other films have shown, that we immigrants can belong to both worlds," she said. "The immigrants in my movie do not have immigrant angst. They are very much part of the Canadian landscape. And they are comfortable with what they are."
"The name of the company that made this film should tell a lot about what we are about and why we made this film," she added, referring to Different Tree Same Wood, the firm producer David Hamilton and she have created.
"Canada, and Toronto in particular, was the place to make this film," she continued, "because this is truly a multicultural place, where Bollywood and Hollywood can connect." While many Canadian filmmakers have sought out to make films with serious subjects, she, for a change, wanted to create something that was purely entertaining.
The film reflects a lot of her own self, she said. She would not have been able to make it a decade ago, she admits. "I was trying to find out how I could fit into the new world," she added. And that was one of the reasons why she made Sam And Me, a story about friendship between a Jewish man and a young Indian immigrant in 1991.
Daughter of exhibitor and distributor S K Mehta, she grew up in New Delhi and immigrated to Canada in 1973 and began her career writing for children's films. Having made heavy social films such as Fire and Earth did she find it difficult to direct a musical comedy?
"There has always been humour in my films," she said, "especially in Sam And Me. You will find comic touches in other films, too. As for Indian music, I grew up with that. And there was excellent music and songs in Earth. "