Things are not what they appear to be in the new film by Gurinder Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice.
A plump Punjabi housewife from Ealing, who fusses over her children and spends most of her time in the kitchen making curries and pakoras, is actually a serial killer, using her culinary know-how to bump off people who have refused to help find a suitor for her single daughter.
That’s the central joke in It’s A Wonderful Afterlife and if you know any plump Punjabi housewives from Ealing, it’s a pretty funny one.
But, even more surprising than the identity of the murderer is that of the actress who plays her: Shabana Azmi. For, in India, Azmi is an absolute megastar.
The winner of five National Awards, the subcontinent’s answer to the Oscars, and a pioneer of the New Wave cinema of the Eighties that challenged many of India’s most deeply held prejudices, 59-year-old Azmi is a revered figure among the general public and India’s political elite.
She’s a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, a former member of parliament and a recipient of the International Gandhi Peace Prize, which she won for a 20-year campaign on behalf of slum-dwellers.
She is, in other words, a million miles from a middle-class housewife living in the suburbs of Greater London and now she is playing that role in a low-budget British farce. How did this happen?
http://newageislam.com/shabana-azmi--star-of-india/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/2772
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4:33 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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