My Son the Fanatic (1997)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Udayan Prasad

Writers:

Hanif Kureishi (short story)
Hanif Kureishi (written by)

Release Date:

7 January 1998 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.

Plot Keywords:

Pakistani | Muslim | Culture Clash | Vandalism | Multicultural

Awards:

1 win & 5 nominations

Cast

Om Puri	...	Parvez
Rachel Griffiths	...	Bettina / Sandra
Akbar Kurtha	...	Farid
Stellan Skarsgård	...	Schitz
Gopi Desai	...	Minoo
Harish Patel	...	Fizzy
Sarah-Jane Potts	...	Madeline Fingerhut (as Sarah Jane Potts)
Judi Jones	...	Mrs. Fingerhut
Geoffrey Bateman	...	Chief Inspector Fingerhut
Bernard Wrigley	...	Drunk man
Moya Brady	...	Druggy prostitute
Badi Uzzaman	...	Man in mosque
Andy Devine	...	Comedian
Shiv Grewal	...	Waiter
Omar Salimi	...	Rashid

MPAA:

Rated R for sexuality, language and a scene of drug use.

Runtime:

Finland:88 min | UK:87 min

Country:

UK | France

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:MA (TV rating) | Iceland:12 | Finland:K-16 | Portugal:M/16 | UK:15 | USA:R

Company:

Arts Council of England

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: (1999-07-03)" (1999)

Multicult gridlock

A Pakistani taxi driver in Britain (Om Puri) is plagued by a bad cosmic joke that seems co-written by Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis: his son, rather than becoming an unrecognizable assimilate, turns into a jihad-embracing Muslim fundamentalist. At the same time, the warmth of a white hooker (Rachel Griffiths) beckons, to the chagrin and hissing tongues of his local countrymen.

The writer Hanif Kureishi's onetime Benetton smugness has mellowed into ripe colors of rue, mockery and regret as he eases into middle age, and this adaptation of his short story is a lovely, surprisingly beautifully shot, sneakily haunting small movie. The dialogue sometimes has a novelish explicitness, and the performances are variable--Puri sometimes drifts into F. Murray Abraham terrain, but he has an amazing, craggy, pain-absorbent face. But the movie has a real subject: the ways in which postmod culture-hybridity isn't always a rainbow-colored day at the beach. And the warmth amid desperation of the central relationship suggests what Neil Jordan's MONA LISA might have been without the smoky-sax romanticism.

The sad thing about seeing this movie was that, after Miramax gave the movie one of their unceremonious heave-hos (par for the course for their good movies), the audience, unblanketed by buzz, hype, an aura of hot-ticket, reacted as shruggingly as critics seem to have. Too bad: MY SON THE FANATIC evokes the sweet, melancholy fatalism of seventies pictures like THE NICKEL RIDE and STRAIGHT TIME. It has the atmosphere of an overcast crime picture without the crime. And it has at least a handful of real, breathing people in it--as rare an occurrence these days as a flight of the dodo.