India Sweets and Spices

I enjoyed this film. Visually it's often quite beautiful, especially if you're someone like me who loves the Indian aesthetic. It's also at times amusing and at other times addressing deep issues. More than once it reminded me of what I consider to be one of the greatest films of all time, The Graduate. Not that India Sweets and Spices approaches The Graduate's greatness, but they have a few things in common. This includes a main character who is twenty-ish, exploring life and her own role in it, and grappling with the phoniness, hypocrisy and superficiality of the adults in her life. Oh, and of course, there's the scene in which she attempts to escape the world around her by exhaling bubbles while sitting at the bottom of her parents' pool.

Added to this in India Sweets is something The Graduate does not have, i.e., the implications, both subtle and not, of what women have to tolerate in a male-driven culture. The message comes across, loud and clear!