Bride & Prejudice

Bride & Prejudice (Director: Gurinder Chadha)














Chadha has been around long enough to be a veteran. Her Bend It Like Beckham is the film she's most known for here. This is based on Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Bollywood (for those not in the know, that's film-crazy Bombay mixed with Hollywood) style. The release date for this in the U.S. was February 11, so I imagine that's a limited release and it's about to make the move to a wider audience.

Speaking of moving to a wider audience, this film stars Indian sweetheart Aishwarya Rai, a woman who won Miss World in 1994 and the face that launched thousands of websites. Touted as "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World," it's truly hard to disagree. Some women make men lust, and some women make men want them to bear their children, and Rai is the latter. With a creamy light-dark skin and green-blue eyes, she's awfully exotic.

And sweet. She's adhering (so far) to the Indian decency standard of not sharing an onscreen kiss with anyone, which makes some segments of Bride lack an emotional payoff. There's a lot of "I want to" glances and faces getting close, only to hold back at the last moment. The man she hates, then loves, then drops, then loves again is played by Torque thespian Martin Henderson, who looks subtly but visibly pained when the opportunity for kissing is nil.

Anyway, the story goes along the familiar Jane Austen lines, where families are trying to marry into other, rich families, so as to gain status and wealth. There's the usual defiant young people standing in defiance of the old system, trying to marry out of love instead of arrangement. This kind of story is perfect for an Indian setting, where arranged marriages are still the norm. Rai plays Lalita, one of many sisters who are looking for (or being set up with) the perfect man. After her older sister Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) appears to be set up with the wealthy Brit Balraj (Naveen Andrews, Sayid from "Lost"), it's her turn, and she has eyes for Balraj's wealthy American friend, Will Darcy (Henderson). Finding him mostly lacking due to misunderstandings and an independent spirit, she averts her attention to Darcy's old friend, now enemy Johnny (Daniel Gillies).

Mixed in with all this romantic intrigue is the Bollywood musical, with plenty of hum-along songs and choreographed numbers, beautifully photographed in scenic areas, full of color. The whole movie is your basic light entertainment. It's the usual love story, musical style. I will say I hate the way the movie goes after Darcy wins Lalita over, at a crucial moment some lame-ass discovery is made that temporarily puts a restraining order on love. I imagine this is the way the Austen novel went, and I imagine it worked well there, but here it's just dumb.

Henderson has a recognizable face after The Ring, but his acting style seems to be that of the flat variety. Rai is radiant, and it's hard to figure out her acting chops just yet--I will say that any time she's onscreen, your eyes immediately divert to her. Chadha seems to be trying to dominate the market with the fluffy side of life, and though I thought Beckham was highly overrated, she seems to be filling a niche. Like I said, it's nicely shot and keeps a fun mood. Hard to argue with the results, but the thing about fluff is, it always leaves you wanting a little more.