Review: Polite Society (2023)
A young Pakistani-British martial artist resolves to save her sister from an arranged marriage
Polite Society (2023)
Written and directed by Nida Manzoor
Here’s the premise: When elder sister Lena Khan (Ritu Arya) seizes on a chance to escape her glum existence as a failed artist and disappointment to her family by agreeing to an arranged marriage, younger sister Ria (Priya Kansara), a martial artist, is determined to prevent the marriage at any cost.
At first, Ria just hates the idea of her older sister leaving the household; later, when she discovers something sinister about the family Lena plans to marry into, Ria goes full commando. Not in the naked sense, in the mission-to-destroy sense.
The would-be groom Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna) seems perfect at first: he’s handsome, fit, and not only a doctor but devoted to caring for pregnant women. He’s apparently rich and lives in a mansion; though the Khan family’s own two-story home is also very nice, it’s not the size of a small museum, where the Shahs hold a flashy Eid party. Salim’s mother is a piece of work. At first seemingly only a controlling parent who wants to stage a perfect wedding, she eventually is revealed as the story’s villain and the foil to Ria. After a number of preliminary skirmishes, the wedding itself becomes a showdown between them.
This story of two Pakistani-British sisters could have been handled many ways — as a soapy drama, as an action film, as a sophisticated comedy, as slapstick, even as horror movie. In fact, it’s a little bit of all those; for the whole first half it’s played too broadly and seems silly. The second half moves better and more successfully integrates the various alternatives, but I wish — just for art’s sake — they had picked the comedy-horror route and stuck with it. As for the horror hidden in the Shah mansion, it offers a pretty good twist and, as I say, they could have built the movie around it. Or around any of the particulars of each character. By not choosing one mise-en-scene, the movie squanders this and other nuggets of potential built into the script.
The other problem, aside from the film’s reluctance to pick a tone, is that all of the characters are underwritten, and thus their behavior and physical choices seem all the more cartoonish. The evil Mrs. Shah (Nimra Bucha) has two modes: weirdly over-charming, and bristling with rage. She keeps protesting that she has “sacrificed everything” to raise her son and secure the perfect bride for him, but given that she lives in a luxurious mansion, what exactly has she sacrificed? We never find out, nor is there any attempt to give her a backstory. So she’s just a villain.
But sometimes a character who’s just the villain is enough. Despite all its faults, I had fun watching the movie. Sometimes the key to enjoyment is simply to understand what a film isn’t, and go with what it is. The filmmakers offer a simple girl-power comedy-action movie where, by the end (and with no explanation, aside from the actual training classes that Ria is shown taking) everybody is kung fu fighting? Okay, sure!
I missed “Polite Sociey” when it was in theaters, but it’s now available for streaming on Amazon Prime and probably other platforms.
Where, by the way, you can see a more entertaining and satisfying take on the life of young Muslim women in London, the limited series We Are Lady Parts — which was also written and directed by Nida Manzoor. The series stars the actress Anjana Vasan, whom we just saw in a supporting role in the film “Wicked Little Letters.”