Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 104 mins
UK Distributor: Universal Pictures
WHO’S IN POLITE SOCIETY?
Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Nimra Bucha, Akshay Khanna, Jeff Mirza, Ella Bruccoleri, Seraphina Beh, Shona Babayemi, Shobu Kapoor
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Nida Manzoor (director, writer), Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Olivier Kaempfer and John Pocock (producers), Tom Howe and Shez Manzoor (composers), Ashley Connor (cinematographer), Robbie Morrison (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
An aspiring young stuntwoman (Kansara) sets out to save her sister (Arya) from her in-laws…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON POLITE SOCIETY?
With Everything Everywhere All At Once now having certified itself in film history with its multiple Oscar wins alongside its near-universal critical acclaim and record-breaking box office, there appears to be a healthy new appetite among audiences for outlandish concepts in mainstream cinematic storytelling.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect, then, for writer-director Nida Manzoor to debut her first feature Polite Society which, while nowhere near as mind-bending or even as intelligent as the Daniels’ modern masterpiece, similarly embraces its eccentricity to deliver a mostly fun and entertaining story of sisterhood, cultural tradition, and the odd bit of martial arts.
Set in London, Polite Society introduces us to the two Khan sisters: there’s Ria (Priya Kansara), a teenager who is determined to become a stuntwoman known as “The Fury”, and Lena (Ritu Arya), a struggling artist who’s just dropped out of art school. Ria is deeply protective of her older sister, so when she learns that Lena has started dating – and very quickly gets engaged to – a handsome doctor Salim (Akshay Khanna) whose family, namely his mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha), comes from wealth, Ria is more than a little suspicious of his motives. Along with her best friends Alba (Ella Bruccoleri) and Clara (Seraphina Beh), she sets out to find out what exactly her sister’s impending in-laws have in store for her, even if it means occasionally unleashing The Fury during some highly stylised kung-fu fights against those in her way.
The clever angle that Manzoor’s script – her first for a feature, after breaking out with hit TV sitcom We Are Lady Parts – initially goes with is that we are seeing things through the eyes of someone who clearly has an overactive imagination. Ria, portrayed excellently by Priya Kansara, is so committed to her desired profession of stunt performing that she seems to envision life as a stylised action movie, complete with heightened fight scenes that incorporate wuxia-style wire work and intricately choreographed high-kicks and punches.
Hers appears to be a universe where action sequences are like big song-and-dance numbers in musicals, where nobody bats an eye to the destruction and violence caused by them, and the film smartly weaves that kind of overly imaginative thinking into the main plot, where it’s a very real possibility that Ria is letting it get the better of her when it comes to accepting her family’s traditions.
Manzoor addresses the clash between the conservative traditions of her British-Pakistani heritage and the more progressive ways of thinking that our lead sisters adopt, by showing it from the perspective of an unreliable narrator who, again, is letting her action movie sensibilities cloud the reality going on around her.
Ria cannot seem to accept that her older sister Lena wants to settle down in the traditional sense, insisting that she is destined to become a great artist despite the fact that she is clearly unhappy with her career choice, to where she takes increasingly drastic measures such as disguising herself and her friends as men to infiltrate the gym that Lena’s new fiancé occupies (an amusing sequence in and of itself, playing out like an elaborate heist film), and plotting to plant used condoms in his bedroom.
The more we see Ria’s exaggerated movie-like perspective play out, though, the more it starts to become apparent that it may in fact be Ria who’s in the wrong, and not the in-laws whom she is certain are up to no good. Ria’s overblown actions indicate a rebellious refusal to accept what her traditional family and community want her to do rather than what she really wants to do, so any suggestion that she may just be wrong about her assumptions is met with furious backlash; she unleashes The Fury, but not the heroic kind that she may think she is unleashing.
It’s a clever way of addressing culture clashes in modern-day society, which Manzoor winningly writes and directs with a witty energy that combines the anything-goes style of action and comedy with some surprisingly thoughtful and ponderous commentary on what it is to be of a particular faith and heritage in today’s more progressive world.
Had the movie stuck with these principles all the way through, Polite Society would have been a rather genius film that tackles its themes with maturity and precision. Unfortunately, the film reaches a point where it unanimously favours the kind of action-thriller that Ria is picturing in her mind, rather than slowly backtrack them to a more realistic outcome, which frustratingly sullies the otherwise intriguing angle.
There’s a reveal about halfway through that gets into some freaky sci-fi territory (no spoilers here, but imagine if the big twist in Get Out was fused with the one in The Rise of Skywalker and you should have a clearer picture of what’s going on) and in addition to creating a slightly odd tonal clash it confirms a number of suspicions that Ria has about certain characters, instead of leaving things a bit more vague for the audience to ponder about later.
From there, the third act of the film mostly becomes an action showcase that still features plenty of impressive fight choreography and, of course, some on-point stunt work, but the ideas about traditionalism vs. progression that had carried much of the film beforehand are largely shifted off to the side, in favour of – ironically – a more traditional action movie climax, and not one that seems to be all in the over-imaginative mind of a character whose love for the genre is well established by this point.
It isn’t a terrible climax by any means, but it is a slight comedown from this hugely inventive and clever set-up that expertly merges bombastic film conventions with views on real-life cultural traditions, with a sly sense of unreliability that has you questioning whether it’s all real or not.
It also doesn’t take away from the fact that Polite Society is a good amount of fun, with a strong sense of humour to go alongside its three-dimensional lead characters who are humanised and sympathetic, and plenty of well-crafted action scenes that get pretty destructive in parts.
There’s a lot to like about this film, even if the third act doesn’t exactly stick the landing, and sets up Nida Manzoor as a lively new filmmaker who can potentially branch out into other genres the same way that Edgar Wright did with his Cornetto trilogy – here’s hoping that, wherever she puts her focus next, she can resist the urge to backtrack on some of her intriguing ideas.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Polite Society is a fun take on cultural traditionalism vs. progressive imagination, which writer-director Nida Manzoor fuses with impressive action and some smart ideas, but it is thrown slightly off course by a final act that favours brawn over brains.
Polite Society is showing in cinemas from Friday 28th April 2023
