Word: austen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indian story in a Western setting with a strongly traditional Western style. This time out, she proves her directorial versatility by offering up a classic tale from Western culture, but tinting it with a distinctly Eastern lens. As the title suggests, the movie is an adaptation of the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice, but instead of taking place in the pastoral setting of 18th century England, the camera takes us through modern-day India, London, Los Angeles, and back again with the fantastical themes of Bollywood following throughout...
...the noise about Bollywood, most North American filmgoers have yet to see the real thing. And maybe they never will. So how about an Anglo- Indian compromise? That's what Gurinder Chadha, whose Bend It Like Beckham was a surprise hit in 2003, has in mind with her Jane Austen adaptation, Bride & Prejudice: star-crossed love, family-values conflict, lots of vigorous song and dance. The only differences are it's in English and, at 1 hr. 51 min., it's about an hour short of a full-length Indian epic...
...surface, it's an inspired idea to transpose Austen's comedy of impeccable manners from the county of Hertfordshire to a proper middle-class family in Amritsar, Punjab. Both 19th century Britain and modern India are societies with strict modes of behavior, where subversion is practiced with a raised eyebrow. (A recent, pretty decent Pride and Prejudice, available onDVD, was set amid another cloistered group, young Mormons.) But Chadha and co-writer Paul Mayeda Berges seem less interested in explaining India's social conservatism than in larkishly mocking it, pinching the cheeks of the supporting characters until they blush into...
...picture--a still picture. She appears always to be fluffing her hair for the next fashion shoot. She's got moves on the dance floor; and in the sumptuous and catchy score by Anu Malik and Craig Pruess, she smartly sells a few numbers that try to update the Austen ethos ("I just wanna man who gives some back/ Who talks to me and not my rack"). What she can't yet do is suggest a complex spirit behind the lovely fa?...
...From a newly-discovered Jane Austen novel: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a final club membership, about which all the members of his community, particularly the journalists, are very ambivalent indeed...