Monsoon Wedding (Criterion)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, just out in a new 2-DVD set from Criterion, is the India native's contribution to the unofficial canon of directors' final works from the homeland before emigrating to the United States. Like Milos Forman's Fireman's Ball, Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart or Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, Monsoon presents the complex story of a multi-faceted, changing nation through a single tight-knit community. The community here being an upper-middle class Punjabi family converging in New Delhi for an elaborate wedding.

Aditi (Vasundhara Das) is a modern working woman who wants to settle down but has a full-time job and an emotionally absent lover that occupy too much of her time to date effectively. She's acquiesces to a partially-arranged marriage (the family picks the suitor but they meet a few times beforehand) and the ceremony is fast-tracked so their new lives can begin. And as with most family procedures everyone is sure to bring plenty of baggage. We witness Aditi's more modern sister trying to talk the bride out of going through with it, a shy servant girl fall in love with the gregarious wedding planner, a stressed out aunt trying to shield the children from a predator she feels powerless to confront and a young nephew arguing unsuccessfully to keep from being sent to boarding school.

But the most resonant moments in the film belong to the tender moments between bride-to-be's parents Lalit and Pimmi. Nair takes exquisite care to show a relationship, years drained of passion, based on companionship and respect. It's this emphasis that gives a viewer leery of the situation hope for Aditi's future.

Lensed by acclaimed cinematographer Declan Quinn (Rachel Getting Married, Vanya on 42nd Street, Leaving Las Vegas) the film unfolds over the course of the big day. As the ceremony approaches tempers flare, old customs clash with the rapidly changing culture of mid-90s India and the titular rainstorm looms.

Nair delights in presenting us with scenes that make light of opposing forces: an elderly woman sings a traditional wedding song while beepers and cell phones hum in the background; the groom-to-be is a modern man who's made a small fortune branching out his family's company to Texas but has a charming romantic flush about whenever in the room with Aditi; and one of the funniest scenes in the whole film takes place between the harried father of the bride to be and a wedding planner over whether the colors of the outdoor tents are reading "hip" or "funeral." Nair and Quinn use a mostly handheld camera in the way that was the intended effect, to create a wonderful intimacy within the chaos. And there's not enough that can be said about the color palette of the film except to say that it does a Punjabi wedding justice.

Criterion has given the film a typically dazzling treatment with its color transfer. Shot for $150k, Nair's film looks like such an explosion of Technicolor one half expects Judy Garland to leap out of a marigold flower.

The film won numerous prestigious festival awards (including the top prize at the 2001 Venice Film Festival) and was the top-grossing foreign-language film of all time in the States until Alfonso Cuaron's own treatise on geopolitical encroachment, government corruption and illicit sex, Y Tu Mama Tambien, came out a month later.

DVD extras include commentary by the director (wherein over the final credits she cops to hating weddings!), interviews with actress Naseeruddin Shah, Quinn and production designer Stephanie Carroll and theatrical trailer. More on the bonus disc separately.

More like this: Phantom India, Gosford Park, Rachel Getting Married, Sweetie, Bend It Like Beckham.