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East Is East

1999, Movie, R, 96 mins

East Is East: Review

EAST IS EAST | FISH AND CHIPS
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Immigrant father, rebellious children: The specifics change, but the broad strokes of this story are always the same. That said, actor-turned-screenwriter Ayub Khan Din finds some fresh angles on this time-honored material. Pakistani patriarch George Khan (Indian actor Om Puri) is married to an Englishwoman, Ella (Linda Bassett); it's 1971 and they have seven English-born children, ranging in age from early 20s to 12. George and Ella run a fish-and-chips shop in a working-class suburb of London; the family lives nearby in a cramped row house. The Khans seem to be striking a reasonable balance between assimilating and maintaining Pakistani traditions until eldest son Nazir (Ian Aspinall) disgraces the family by bolting in the middle of his own wedding, an arranged union masterminded by his father. George repudiates Nazir, and blithely sets about finding suitable Pakistani brides for his next two sons, playboy Tariq (Jimi Mistry) and mild-mannered Abdul (Raji James). He also sends 12-year-old Sajid (Jordan Routledge) to Muslim school and orders tomboy daughter Meenah (Archie Panjabi) to start wearing a sari and behaving like a properly brought-up girl — God forbid he should find out that Saleem (Chris Bissom) is in art school rather than engineering college! Ella is caught between her insubordinate children and her husband's old-fashioned demands, which become ever harsher as his sons and daughter chafe ever more openly at his authority. Oh, and it's funny — so it comes as a brutal shock when George finally starts taking out his repressed rage with his fists. Adapted from Khan Din's 1996 stage play, which drew heavily on his own memories of growing up Anglo-Pakistani, the film mixes broad humor with a surprisingly subtle portrait of a family pulled in a bewildering variety of directions, and resists the warm-and-fuzzy wrap-up favored by so many domestic comedies. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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