Polite Society
Directed by Nida Manzoor
Running time: 1hr43 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE
Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya star in Polite Society
I wonder if the makers of Polite Society were at all annoyed when Shekhar Kapur and Jemima Khan’s What’s Love Got To Do With It? got in a few months ahead of them on the festival and cinema release circuits: two mainstream comedies about the politics of marriage in modern British-Pakistani society, they’re at risk of being repeatedly yoked together into thinkpieces and industry analyses, despite having little in common beyond that broad description. Kapur and Khan’s pleasant-enough film faded quickly from memory: an attempt to diversify the Richard Curtis romcom template, it never shook off the white gaze of Lily James’ protagonist. Polite Society, an altogether more vibrant and original proposition from writer-director Nida Manzoor (creator of the delightful, BAFTA-winning sitcom We Are Lady Parts), will likely have the last laugh. It certainly has more of them.
Through the eyes of its spiky teenage heroine Ria (Priya Kansara, thoroughly winning in her feature film debut), Manzoor’s film doesn’t skimp on cultural particulars, but also takes a healthily sceptical view of marriage altogether. It’s certainly not in Ria’s ten-year plan: obsessed with martial arts, she’s laser-focused on her dream of becoming a movie stuntwoman, even if her parents and teachers wish she’d find another calling. Ria believes in following her bliss, and assumes her grungy, artistically inclined older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) does too. When Lena drops out of art school and sinks into depression, Ria is concerned; when she swiftly and unexpectedly becomes engaged to suave Muslim doctor Salim (Akshay Khanna), to the delight of their parents, Ria feels actively betrayed. She doesn’t understand how her rebellious sister suddenly morphed into a prim conformist, but she knows she has to stop the nuptials to save her.
Cue a frenetically genre-meshing, action-heavy spin on a classic wedding-farce setup, that works because it deftly maintains a dual perspective inside Ria’s head and out of it. We understand and even share her adolescent dismay at the threat of conventional domesticity coming even for its unlikeliest holdouts: if Lena could succumb, after all, what does the future hold for Ria and her arse-kicking dreams? But the film also permits us to step outside her disappointment, to see what marriage might offer to Lena at a low ebb. Does it necessarily spell the end of her artistic endeavours, as Ria imagines? Is Salim really the oily villain that Ria sees? Polite Society doesn’t trade in dull girlboss platitudes and empowerment binaries; there’s messy, compromised real life here, even when the comedy is at its most loudly heightened.
Which is very loudly, by the way: you have to submit to Manzoor’s chaotic pacing and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink styling to enjoy Polite Society, and accept a certain ratio of missed gags for the multitudes it throws at the wall. Its blend of wildly stylised martial-arts fantasy and small-scale family drama here will put many in mind of recent Oscar-guzzler Everything Everywhere All at Once, and may divide audiences along similar lines — though I admit I prefer Manzoor’s vision, which relies less on sheer piled-on whimsy for comic effect than on the barbed, punchy writing underpinning all the eccentricity. It’s not hard to imagine executives at Marvel seeing this splashy debut and calling her agent, though I hope she gets to make more lively, loopy comedies on her own terms.
POLITE SOCIETY (2023) Written by Nida Manzoor | Shot by Ashley Connor | Edited by Robbie Morrison
Now in UK cinemas