Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Completed in 2019 but first shown at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, India Sweets and Spices , written and directed by Geeta Malik, is an amiable but not especially ambitious New Jersey-set mother-daughter story that affirms female solidarity in the face of hypocrisy. Its basic message is that Indian men whose marriages are arranged by their parents are bound to cheat. Its supplementary message is that Indian mothers suppress their true personalities for the sake of appearances. Whether you can reveal your true self and keep the nice house with the swimming pool out back is open to debate, but India Sweets and Spices is a feel-good movie set in a well-appointed neighbourhood of Ruby Hill, filled with affluent Americans whose families migrated from India. We admire the earrings, the fake décor, not to mention the books that you cannot read, and the complete absence of racial hatred – here, there are class tensions, instead. We especially salivate over food. How can we be...

  Children of migrants are caught between two cultures: the culture of the land that their parents left behind and the culture of their adoptive country. These can be at odds. In the worst case, one culture can despise another, thinking of the host as corrupt and morally bankrupt. This even before religion enters into the discussion. This tension is explored in Norway-based, Pakistan migrant Iram Haq’s second film as writer-director, What Will People Say? (Hva vil folk si?) A contemporary story – mobile phones and social media play a part – it is based on Haq’s own experience of being sent against her will to Pakistan for a year aged 14 in 1990. Haq’s hero is Nisha (Maria Mozhdah) a sixteen year old girl born to Pakistani parents but living in Norway. At the start of the film we see her running in the street as her father (Adil Hussain) moves from room to room checking on his sleeping children. Eventually he finds her in bed. Father adores Nisha, whom he gives a 1000 krone no...