The daughter of orthodox Sikh rebels against her parents’ traditionalism by running off to Germany with a football team (soccer in America).

Directed by
Gurinder Chadha

Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance, Sport

Cast
Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Anupam Kher, Archie Panjabi, Shaznay Lewis, Frank Harper, Juliet Stevenson, Shaheen Khan, Ameet Chana, Pooja Shah, Paven Virk, Preeya Kalidas, Trey Farley, Saraj Chaudhry

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Keaven’s Rating: 7/10

I’m not sure why IMDB mentions the Germany game in their plot outline. That was actually only one of several games played in the movie [shrug]

This is a story of a young woman who is an extreamly talented soccer player. Throughout the movie she tries to balance her parents’ culteral expectations of her, with her love of the game. While knowledge of and interest in the game is not nessesary for the viewer to enjoy the movie, it sure helps

There were very few slow moments, i thought, and they were relativly short. The cinemetography wasn’t that great, and some of the sets left much to be desired, but the acting made up for most of it.

One of the things that i really liked about the movie was the way the main character, Jess (Played by Parminder Nagra), showed real signs of struggle. This wasn’t mearly a movie about a child rebelling against her parents or culture, this was a very obvious internal conflict of Jess trying to reconcile her devotion to her culture and her love of soccer. Not every teenaged child hates their parents and culture, and this was a great movie showing just that. Jess sinsearly loved her parants and chaireshed her Indian culture, and she wanted nothing more than to simply integrate soccer into that. It was wonderful and moving to watch.

Watching this movie also made me realize what a culturally difficient society we live in, as Americans. There are those who have looked into their herritage and have kept alive in their families the traditions and culter of their ancestors, but some of us (myself included) are SO “american” that we don’t really have a deep, ritch culture. I could take my pick of course; American Indian, Irish, Dutch, Sweedish… i could trace my roots to any of them and pick which traditions i wanted to redescover. But it’s not the same. Sometimes a deep ritch culture can be like handcuffs when you live in such a free society as America… but it also offers community and structure, and a link to the past that some of us don’t have.

This was a great movie.