Gurinder Chadha’s had a pretty good run of gentle examinations of immigrant life in Britain as two cultures intersect, the traditional one full of expectations and restrictions and the modern-facing world offering potential freedom but also a loss of connection with the past. Best known for “Bend it Like Beckham”, her latest film trades football for a Bruce Springsteen fixation, trades a contemporary setting for 1987’s Thatcherite Britain, and deals with a Pakistani boy rather than an Indian girl. It’s still a fairly feel-good story of finding your place in a world balanced between tradition and modernity, in this case showing a bit of bravura filmmaking as Javed gets more and more engrossed in the words and music of Springsteen and his themes of escape and transcendence.
Admittedly this isn’t wildly unfamiliar – but there’s an irresistible energy and enjoyment here that keeps things rolling, and while it’s a personal story it does know how to break out enough to find interesting places in the lives of its supporting cast, whether it be the socially-aware girlfriend, the traditionalist dad going through an employment crisis, the best friend left behind by this newfound passion, or even the sister who finds her own method of rebellion. This is a very solid film that’s only real drawback is that it’s nothing particularly new or different – but it does what it does pretty darn well.
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