Review Nina’s Heavenly Delights : A Delightful Watch

I have not being feeling to well off late and therefore lack of action on this blog over the past few days. Yesterday was nothing great either, left work darn early and on the way home stopped by at the local rental DVD shop. From the “new arrival” section, I picked a romantic comedy centered on an Indian family living away from homeland.

Nina’s Heavenly Delights is mainly focused on Nina Shah, a young Indian-Scottish woman who ran away from home some 3 years back on the day of her arranged marriage. But now she has to go back to her Scottish town to attend her father’s funeral. She rushes home, only to be stuck in the middle of a family crisis.

Nina discovers that her father had a gambling problem and had bet half-ownership of the family restaurant, the New Taj, on a horse race. Since he lost the bet, the New Taj is now half-owned by Mr. Mackinlay but the restaurant dealings are looked after by his daughter Lisa. Since New Taj has nothing much to offer after Nina’s fathers death, Lisa and her Nina’s mother have decided to sell it off to a local rival.

Nina who grew up learning to cook “from the heart” from her father, a noted chef, isn’t too happy with their decision. But she decides to set things right after learning that her dad had secretly entered the New Taj into Glasgow’s upcoming Best of the West curry competition – she wants to win and restore her family’s pride and thereby let go of her guilt. Impressed with the idea, Lisa too jumps in help Nina with her plans. But of course it’s not that simple. While teaching Lisa how to cook Indian, Nina, a closeted lesbian, finds herself falling in love with her business partner, who happens to be dating Nina’s brother, Kary – well so it appears.

Besides the Indian food delicacies, slowly and steadily family secrets come in the open but Nina’s phobia of coming out about her sexuality to her conservative family remains a hurdle to jumped over till the very end.

Director & writer Pratibha Parmar’s debut film may come across as Bollywoodish, overly theatrical, unbelievable and very convenient in plot. One wonders whether the inserted Bollywoodness via Nina’s drag-queen pal Bobby was done out of inspiration or infact to mock the Hindi Film Industry.

Nevertheless, the film’s central partnership between Nina and Lisa is beautifully done by the two leading actresses, Shelley Conn and Laura Fraser. You can’t help but feel all mushy about the chemistry in this unconventional affair. The food metaphors have been imaginatively employed by Parmer, especially while expressing Nina’s coming to terms with her own identity. Nina’s Heavenly Delights also deals well with interracial relationships; an issue which always seems to get either totally neglected or overly high-lighted in most films.

In my opinion, for a romantic comedy that seeks to evade too much sorrow, Parmar has handled the subject very well. The film makes a serious point about family reservations and matters of the heart but does so with intelligence and a gentleness of humor.

Even though this film was poorly rated by critics across UK and US and I did find their reasons justified to certain extent but somehow I cant help but feel that they were being too harsh in the their decision.

To me this film showcases a frowned upon relationship in a positive manner without feeling the need to indulge in typical queer film acts. And this is exactly why Nina’s Heavenly Delights manages to bring out a-feel-good outcome in someone like me.