52 Films by Women Vol 7. 37. POLITE SOCIETY (Director: Nida Manzoor)
British Pakistani writer-director Nida Manzoor makes a confident if repetitive feature debut with her action anti-romantic comedy, Polite Society , which features appealing performances from its broadly unfamiliar multi-racial cast. I wanted to like it more than I did. It has a UK ‘12A’ rating which marks it as suitable for audiences of all ages, though with two scenes of near strangulation of a young woman by an older one, I felt that the film classifiers were surprisingly generous. The story is told from the point of view of a young martial arts enthusiast, Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) who idolises stunt woman and former Gladiators competitor turned star Eunice Huthart in spite of being told that she should consider being a doctor, one of the film’s main satirical points. Ria is however not the film’s protagonist. Rather it is her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya) who is the centre of the drama. Having quit art college believing that she is not good enough, she falls for a hand...