U r right I thoroughlyenjoyed this movie.
________________________________ From: vgd67 <vg...@yahoo.co.uk> To: gay_bombay@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 8:20 PM Subject: g_b The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel If those in Mumbai hurry they'll just be able to catch a screening of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel before it will, most probably, go at the end of this week. Its not a great film, but a very pleasant one - very superior timepass due to the gallery of wonderful Brit actors who have been assembled for it: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Celie Imrie, Penelope Wilton. Its based on a novel, Deborah Moggach's These Foolish Things, which is also very good timepass. The story is about a bunch of elderly Brits who find themselves in a hotel in India because they can't afford to stay or its too unpleasant to stay in the UK any long - they are essentially being outsourced to India which, we're told, is much more respectful of its elderly. Of course, it helps if the elderly are white and I wondered if the film would be annoying because of cliches about India and bad writing for the Indian characters. There is a touch of this, but not that much. You get exotic India, but also modern day India where a girl climbs into her boyfriend's room for sex (and leads to a neat little lesbian joke). Most of the Indian characters aren't badly written, but the dialogue for the lead desi character, Sunny, who runs the hotel, is really bizarre and a bit silly. But Sunny is played by Dev Patel who's cute and manages to make even the silliness sound plausible. The other Indian character who starts off well, but ends rather flat is, sadly, the wonderful Lilette Dubey. SPOILER ALERT - STOP NOW IF YOU ARE GOING TO SEE THE FILM AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW MORE But the film is really about the elderly Brits and since they are played by these amazing elderly Brit actors they are all amazing. And the reason I'm writing about this on these mailing lists is that one of the best performances is put in by Tom Wilkinson who plays a retired High Court judge who's gay and had spent his childhood in India, and has now returned looking for the Indian boyfriend he was forcibly separated from when their love affair was discovered and had to leave behind in his youth. This is just one story among many in the film, but I think it stood out for being quite amazingly moving. You realise what a trauma the separation had been for Graham, the judge, and the guilt he had carried all his life for the problems he felt his Indian lover must have faced, because he was a servant for Graham's family and he and his family were immediately dismissed when the affair was discovered. So after a lifetime of concealing this - and a lifetime in which, in the UK, at least being openly gay became possible - Graham has come back to Jaipur to try and find his lover Manoj. And he does and finds that Manoj has, as might have been expected, been married off, yet they meet again and it is a wonderfully moving reunion, and also what happens after. To its credit, the film doesn't forget Manoj's wife and you get a sense of her story and how she knew about Graham and was able to accept it too. It helps that she is played by a truly truly amazing actress, Neena Kulkarni, who I think is well known on the Marathi stage, and who can convey incredible and subtle volumes in just her few scenes. (She was also truly wonderful as the lead character in one of the three films that makes up Sachin Kundalkar's film Gandh). Manoj is also played by a fine character actor, Rajendra Gupta and he does his role with warmth and dignity, and makes what could have a sad story quite beautiful and moving. This is really worth seeing the film for and, as I said, the rest of it is also very good time pass.
