The movie's ending - suspended between liberation and loneliness - is just about ideal, a perfect summary of tensions that are essentially universal yet also compellingly specific; finding particularly acute expression amid a community of economic deprivation, huge cultural challenges and some inherent racism. When Puri commences a relationship with Griffiths, representing the ultimate transgression across just about every available line, it's hard to resist the father's sense of release even as it strikes you as the latest example in the dismal tradition of filmic whore as symbol of anything-you-like. The counterpoint with the son expertly shows how fluid these familiar cross-cultural and cross-generational structures and struggles actually are and how there's perhaps no way out of an endless cycle of rebellion and adjustment and readjustment. The movie is unexceptional in its technique but apart from some awfully clumsy comedy at the start impresses with its vigor and intellect.
Review of My Son the Fanatic
