My Son The Fanatic

This charming movie about cross-cultural assimilation and intergenerational struggle in contemporary England may not always live up to its brilliant opening scene, in which Parvez (Om Puri), the epitome of oblivious fatherhood, meets his stuffy English in-laws-to-be. But it's a winner nonetheless. Parvez, a Pakistani taxi driver engaged in offhanded pimping in a bleak Northern English town, ambles into a middle age crisis that finds him falling in love with gentle prostitute Bettina (Rachel Griffiths) and increasingly estranged from his dutiful wife Minoo (Gopi Desai) and strident son Farid (Akbar Kurtha). Farid, engaged to the daughter of a local constable and hea...