The way the character has been crafted by Shinde, and interpreted by Sridevi, is gloriously feminine, and uniquely Indian.Ĭast: Sridevi, Adil Hussain, Mehdi Nabbou, Priya Anand, Neelu Sodhi, Cory Hibbs, Sulabha Deshpande Yes, there’s grit there, but it’s tempered with compassion and dignity. Ultimately, what make English Vinglish memorable are the small, step-by-step choices Shashi makes to transforms herself. “It is my way of saying ‘Sorry’ and ‘Thank you’ to my mother, and a tribute to women,” Shinde writes in the film’s press notes. With English Vinglish, female director Shinde - known for her documentaries and commercials - brings her own lifetime of experience into the picture. And the work of Indian female filmmakers like Chadha, Mehta, Mira Nair and most recently Zoya Akhtar ( Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) is always worth a look. There is a growing body of work that shows Indian female characters flexing their muscles: Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham Deepa Mehta’s Water the late Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked: A True Story, starring Aishwarya Rai and Amol Palekar’s Anaahat/Eternity, starring Sonali Bendre, spring to mind.
The image of the newly confident Shashi striding down a Manhattan street, a takeout coffee in hand and a trench coat belted over her sari, will make you smile days after you leave the theater. It’s no surprise that by the end of the film, Shashi will conquer her fears, but the route Shinde takes to get her there is distinctively Shashi’s. Her fellow international students include a Pakistani cab driver, a South Indian engineer, a Mexican nanny and a smitten French man ( Mehdi Nabbou), also a cook, who tastes her laddoos and tells her, “You are an artist.” Shashi retorts, “When a man cooks, it’s an art. It is at this point that Shashi realizes that her lack of English skills is holding her back, and so when she spies an ad for an English class on a passing city bus, she decides to sneak out of her relatives’ house and navigate New York City’s subways and buses to get there.
English vinglish hindi movie review series#
Once in New York, the Hindi-speaking Shashi is faced with ever-mounting humiliations, in a series of beautifully mounted, yet squirm-inducing scenes. When Shashi is called upon to fly to New York City - solo - to help her sister arrange a niece’s wedding, she is terrified (look for Amitabh Bachchan in a short, but memorable, scene onboard her flight).
Her teenaged daughter treats her with contempt, while the casually masked cruelty of her husband’s words ( Adil Hussain) cut her to the core: “My wife was born to make laddoos!” he gloats. Her laddoos (a golden, sweet snack ball) earn raves and she even runs a small catering business, but her family treats her like a servant. Shashi is a dedicated mother and gifted cook, the wife of a busy executive in the western Indian city of Pune. STORY: India Chooses ‘Barfi!’ for Oscars Foreign-Language Entry Indeed, a recent San Francisco Bay Area screening found the audience packed with families and young children, a heartening prospect given the film’s positive message encouraging diversity and tolerance. The Eros release, which enjoyed acclaim (and according to reports, a standing ovation) at the Toronto International Film Festival, is up against strong competition from the satire Oh My God and India’s foreign language Oscar submission, Barfi!, but its universal message - conveyed with wit and heart - is persuasive enough to draw a sizable audience nevertheless.
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