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Chicago International Film Fest
Nina’s Heavenly Delights (Pratibha Parmar, UK)
A documentary filmmaker before reality television sullied that branch of media, Pratibha Parmar’s first feature film Nina’s Heavenly Delights is something of a visual feast. An Indian-Scottish-lesbian-curry-romantic comedy, Nina’s speaks to the possibilities of love across cultural and societal taboos, with the sumptuous backdrop of savory Indian dishes and a dash of Bollywood glitz. Intentionally campy at times and brandishing a Disney-like sentimentality, Nina’s hosts an array of flavorful characters with lilting Indo-Scottish accents that make this amateurish love story more palatable. Shot in HD and inspired by the youthful visual style of French New Wave Cinema, Nina’s embraces a panoply of lush, warm colors which further contribute to the breezy, light-heartedness of the film.
Returning to her home in Glasgow for the first time in three years to attend her father’s funeral, Nina (Shelley Conn) is in for quite a few surprises. Her family’s cherished restaurant, The New Taj, is in the midst of crumbling and half of it has been sold to Lisa (Laura Fraser), a former classmate and friend of the family. Nina also has to contend with her ex-fiancé Sanjay (Raji James), who owns a rival Indian restaurant and wants to buy The New Taj to get back at her for ditching him at the altar. Add the obvious, smitten glances of Lisa and the closeted sexual identity of Nina to the pot and you have a surefire recipe for disaster. Things really heat up when Lisa and Nina enter the “Best of the West” curry competition to save the restaurant and have to spend many a day licking chicken chaputi off each other’s fingers and hiding their budding romance from Nina’s overbearing, traditional family. Nina and Lisa’s stilted love affair has spawned one of the most hesitant, squeamish lesbian kissing scenes I’ve ever come across. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian sums it up quite well:
“Conn and Fraser do some tentative snogging but they look as if, on the shout of “Cut!,” they sprang apart and ran away for their respective bottles of Listerine.”
The conflation of sex and food is a much-honored erotic pastime, especially in queer cinema, as films like Better Than Chocolate, Mango Kiss, and Eating Out attest to. As much as the food-sex collapse in Nina’s was often trite and predictable, certain instances of food-inspired humor, like a flamboyant drag queen named Bobbi’s dance troupe, “The Chutney Queens,” helped squelch an otherwise stagnant metaphor. Also, the myriad of family secrets that come trumpeting out in one big jumble of resolution near the film’s end seemed forced and unnecessary. Not only is Nina grappling with homophobia, but her brother is secretly married to a white woman, her mother is in love with her late-husband’s business rival, and her sister, for some reason, feels the need to hide her love of Highland dancing. All of these trivial subplots are blurted out one after the other, in an anti-climactic group hug of love and acceptance that almost made me lose my lunch.
The film’s campiness comes full circle with its Bollywood ending, complete with sing-alongs, extravagant costumes and dance routines. The cross-cultural anxiety and pressures of conformity that could have been explored are barely hinted at, and Parmar instead chooses to stick with the fairytale “follow your heart” reasoning that is appetizing but ultimately unfulfilling. A feel-good movie that tempts your taste buds, Nina’s Heavenly Delights falls short of its enticing promises.
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