Bend it like Beckham

In an un-funny coincidence, a Indian girl from Southall with a passion for football and David Beckham has become the unlikely focus of Britain’s angst over its sporting hero’s fractured left foot and the near-collapse of England’s World Cup dreams.

Jess Bhamra, heroine of director Gurinder Chadha’s new feelgood movie, Bend it like Beckham, plays football despite the disapproval of her traditionalist father (Anupam Kher), falls in love with her dishy Irish coach and kicks her mother’s lessons in cooking aloo gobhi in the face.

Along the way, she gives multi-cultural Britain lessons in that most Indian of aspirational concepts, unity in diversity.

Much of Britain is expected to laugh and fall in love as industry analysts prophesy the film as the comedy hit of the year both here and in the US. Its ecstatic distributors plan to take it to Cannes.

The small-budget film, whose 430-screens mega opening on Friday is equivalent to that of the Hollywood multi-starrer, Ocean’s Eleven, is somewhat erroneously being seen as part of Britain’s so-called Indian summer of show-cased sub-continental talent and popular culture.

Chadha, herself a Southall girl who came to international attention with her first feature film Bhaji on the Beach, says that her newest big idea was born during the 1996 European football championship.

Recalling grown white men sitting on the pavements and crying over a limp penalty kick by an England player Chadha thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be great to take this big, male, testosterone-filled world that's grabbed the nation and stick an Indian girl right at the heart of it?"

So she did and it is, according to most accounts "great".

Pre-release audience reviews have been almost uniformly ecstatic about the effortless humour, the flashy football action executed by actress Parminder Nagra and the attention-grabbing cameo appearance of a Beckham lookalike.

The result is a film that is seen as the link between British India and its white, mainstream host nation. High school students of all colours have been recording their impressions of a "wicked", "mega-funny film", while many rebellious white teenagers say they empathise with the Indian heroine’s problems with parental authority.

Chadha affirms that her offering is "a celebration of" of all of Britain and the British identity as a whole, adding that Beckham and his Spice Girl wife Victoria saw the final cut two months ago "and liked it a lot".

The title refers to Beckham’s awesome ability to bend the flight path of a football, an artistic talent known as the Magnus effect in honour of the German physicist who first studied it.

The film has become a talking point for a nation obsessed with Beckham’s broken bones and the slim chances of his playing in the World Cup finals in Japan this summer.

More crucially, say analysts, it marks the coming of age for Indian themes on the big and small British screen, along with the unique and ultimate validation of the forthcoming Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Bombay Dreams.

But a small cast of doubters is suggesting that the coincidental release of Bend it like Beckham at a time when the England football captain cannot even walk is "inappropriate".

Some others say the film is over-rated, "a confusing mixture of genres" and a token gesture to the growing British commercial successes notched up by Hindi films.

Interview with Parminder Nagra

After work on stage and TV (fleeting appearances in Casualty and Holby City), British actress Parminder Nagra gets her big-screen break playing Jess in football comedy-drama "Bend it Like Beckham"...

How did you get involved with "Bend it Like Beckham"?
The director Gurinder Chadha had seen me in a couple of plays and told me she had this footballing project about a young girl who lives in Hounslow and whose parents don't want her to play. About a year later the script turned up, I read the first scene, and I thought I could absolutely imagine myself doing this, even though my character is ten years younger than I am. Gurinder still put me through the audition process though!

How would you describe your character, Jess?
She's strong and persevering and just doesn't give up. Football is a passion that she holds dear to her heart. She's really going for her dream and there are obstacles in the way, but deep down she knows what she wants, and she pursues that. I really identified with Jess, because my own dream was acting, which isn't the most conventional profession.

How did you prepare for the footballing sequences?
Gurinder got us in contact with Simon Clifford, who runs the Futebol De Salao, which teaches the Brazilian way of playing. You use both feet and you learn lots of flashy tricks. I'd be given this homework, which was like doing a 90-minute aerobics session in my back garden. I practised so much I wore a hole in the turf! We had about seven or eight weeks of intensive practice, but I hurt my foot in the first couple of weeks and I got nervous about hitting the ball. My co-star Keira Knightley ended up with two black eyes from heading the ball again and again. What's interesting is that people are surprised that I learnt to play football. They all say, "But you look so petite and demure."