NINA’S HEAVENLY DELIGHTS

UK, 2006, 94 minutes, Colour.
Laura Fraser, Shelley Conn, Art Malik.
Directed by Pratbha Parmar.

In recent years, Bollywood films have become very popular in the United Kingdom, often being screened in mainstream theatres and on television. At the same time, a small industry has grown up in the UK, the making of films that span the different communities, the families who migrated, especially from Pakistan and India, and the locals who have welcomed them or been hostile to them. Films include East is East, Anita and Me, Chicken Tikka Marsala. Nina’s Heavenly Delights belongs to this genre.

The setting is modern Glasgow – and the film takes a lot of trouble to include as many vistas of the city as possible. The community is Indian (with pronounced Scottish accents), especially those who run restaurants in the city.

This is very much a food movie. It opens with Nina’s father showing her how to make his award-winning curry. Nina (Shelley Conn) goes to London to avoid an arranged marriage but returns when her father dies. There is an air of competitiveness around since her former fiance wants to win the national curry competition; his father wants to buy the restaurant and one of Nina’s schoolfriends (Laura Fraser) now is part-owner. The climax is the competition screened for television. Plenty of ingredients for a curry of a film.

The spicy curry comes from an unanticipated angle. The competition goes as expected. The family squabbles are as predictable enough – involving Nina’s brother and his marrying a white girl, Nina’s mother and her memories of her own arranged marriage, the envy of the jilted fiance. The unexpected angle is that Nina falls in love with her schoolfriend who is in love with her. This lesbian aspect of the story is told with feeling, the story writer-director a woman, showing the attitudes of the family, the determination of the lover, the embarrassment of Nina – and how this all works out for a happy ever after ending. There is also a sub-plot concerning Nina’s friend who is a drag queen in the local Glasgow clubs. While the film seems a straightforward ethnic comedy, it serves as a questioning of traditional values.