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.
Read the rest of this review at Greencine.
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