Bending the Rules for Football

 So I didn’t get a chance at football. Would things be different if I were born or raised in a Western country? When Jess tried to do just that, she ended up in a mess. In 2002, Gurinder Chadha brought us a comedy full of longing to play. One of the most inspiring sports movies for women, “Bend It Like Beckham,” teases the Indian NRI audience about their resistance to change in a foreign land. Jesminder ‘Jess’ Bhamra’s (Parminder Nagra) family lives in West London. She is a regular tom boy, who loves football. But the only place she can display her talent is the park with her guy friends. But, her life changes when Juliette Paxton (Keira Knightly) recommends Jess to her coach Jo (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) for the local girl’s football team. Jess goes ahead and plays albeit without telling her parents who have strictly forbidden her to play this boys’ game. And thus ensue confusions, dramatic rows, tears and finally some sweet tasting victory when Jess has to deliver a kick that bends the ball around the wall of players.

 

Adding to the story is a love triangle between Jess, Jule and Jo. And Mrs. Paxton has us in splits with her fears that Jess and Jule are in a lesbian relationship. And who can forget Mrs. Bhamra’s ‘alu-gobhi.’ 

What I love about the movie is that the make-up is simple, so real! Jess looks like a real Indian teenager and acts like one too. I love the scene where she takes off her rubber band in a hurry to look good just before she meets Jo. And the fact that she is actually made to look good at football. I don’t know whether she actually plays the game though.

We only see a little bit of the real David Beckham. And that’s never enough, is it? However, Meyers keeps the heat up pretty well! Anupam Kher floors us too with his usual super-Dad acting. I love the way Gurinder Chadha gently pokes fun at both Indian and British cultures as the girls bend quite a few rules. The movie is a whole paraphernalia of customs and traditions being bent for one passion. That includes rejecting push-up bras and plump sized cholis.