A little big film

SHOT WITH HAND-HELD cameras in forty locations within one breathless month, Ms. Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding was not regarded as a favourite to win the celebrated Golden Lion award at the world's oldest film festival in Venice. Film lovers in this country are likely to share the mixture of delight and surprise Ms. Nair expressed on winning the prestigious award (a ``small thing...has become big''), the first to be presented to a woman and an Indian. The director, who has earned a reputation for grappling with controversial issues in her films, dwells on the four days and nights which lead up to a traditional Punjabi wedding in her latest award-winning exertion which she says was conceived of in a ``spirit of lightness''. Colourful and energetic, Monsoon Wedding's narrative weaves the diverse strands of the family's inter-relationships against the noisy and boisterous backdrop of the impending marriage. Cracks begin to appear under the surface of the merry-making, not the least because of the discovery that an important member of the family is a child molester. Ms. Nair develops the tensions caused by the illicit trysts, the petty squabbles and the small acts of treachery to paint a portrait of an Indian middle class whose traditions are increasingly in conflict with change.

Awards are not new to Ms. Nair, whose India Cabaret, a portrait of strippers at Mumbai nightclubs, won the prize for best documentary at the American Film Festival as early as 1985. Her first feature film Salaam Bombay! secured the best new director award at the Cannes Film Festival as well as an Oscar nomination for the best foreign film. But as prizes go, this is surely the big one in the career of the 44-year-old film director, who leapt into the world spotlight with Salaam Bombay!. The quality of some of her work since then suggested she had failed to tap her full potential, but with Monsoon Wedding, Ms. Nair seems to have made a stunning comeback by capturing the approval of the jury at Venice and pipping a hotly-favoured Iranian film (Mr. Babak Payami's Secret Ballot) at the post.

In addressing the issue of paedophilia, and by locating it within the context of the compass of the family, Ms. Nair deals with an awkard and controversial subject. But this is typical of the courageous film director who believes that the cinematic medium should be used to provoke, to ``get under the skin''. Salaam Bombay!, her first full-length narrative film, is a piece of gritty realism which makes few concessions as it documents the squalid and poverty-struck lives of street children in a neighbourhood that is `worked' by drug-peddlers and prostitutes. Mississippi Masala is an exploration of colliding cultural worlds when a black rug cleaner falls in love with the daughter of Indian immigrants who run a motel in the American south - a story of racial biases, dislocation and cross-cultural influences. In Kamasutra: A Tale of Love, Ms. Nair explores the sexual politics between a princess and her servant in a 16th century Indian court. A film which focussed on the visual or the sensual aspect at the cost of an already thin and underdeveloped narrative, Kamasutra made as much news for Ms. Nair's 18-month battle with the Censor Board to have the film released for Indian audiences. Monsoon Wedding was showcased at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year though not in the competitive category. The prize it picked up at Venice reveals the increasing recognition accorded to foreign cinema and ought to enthuse other Indian directors who feel - either legitimately or otherwise - that they do not receive the international appreciation and support they deserve.

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