'It`s A Wonderful Afterlife '
Cast: Shabana Azmi , Goldy Notay , Sendhil Ramamurthy and others
Director: Gurinder Chadha
SEEING the travesty that was ‘Bride& Prejudice’ , a lot of us took to wondering how the director of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ , that sweet all-Indian fable, could have turned so tone-deaf to the rhythms of that honorary Indian Jane Austen (whose marriage-mad characters might well be set in the subcontinent). But after the enjoyably batty ‘It’s A Wonderful Afterlife’ , I suppose it’s time to wonder how Gurinder Chadha was drawn to an empowerment saga like ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ in the first place.
Her talents seem to be those of a natural-born farceur, evident right from the opening minutes that detail a series of grisly murders, in London, by the “Curry Killer.” Newspaper headlines are ablaze with puns like “Police Dahl-lemma,” a victim ends up being suffocated by chapatti dough, and there’s a great gross-out gag on an operating table that, literally, makes for an explosive beginning.
Later, too, Chadha orchestrates a terrific send-up of the prom-night sequence from Carrie, except that this version involves flying food.
These highs, unfortunately, aren’t sustained in this story of an Austenian mother (a superbly harried Shabana Azmi) who wants to see her daughter (Goldy Notay) married off to a nice Indian boy.
Also, in matters of satire, there is the difference between someone like Chadha, an outsider looking in, and, say, Dibakar Banerjee, an insider looking around and about. With the latter, we feel included in the joke, a part of the proceedings, whereas with the former, we feel as if we are on show, as if exoticised for a world audience.
And yet, a healthy sense of the ridiculous helps us hang on. Even the supposed “moral” is endearingly daffy, especially as stated by a ghost whose pallor is beginning to peel, leaving behind the most unsightly of scabs: “Even fat people can find love.”
It is then that you wonder if this director, with her unapologetically zaftig zeal, felt a kinship to her full-bodied heroine, described as having a “bottom like a buffalo.” Perhaps, beneath all the gags, this too is an empowerment tale. Perhaps ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ wasn’t all that much an aberration.
