When British director Nida Manzoor writes about sisters, she leans right in, embracing the intensity of the familial bond even to the point of violence – keeping her tongue in cheek, mind you.
In We Are Lady Parts, the 2021 TV series that Manzoor created, wrote and directed, viewers are introduced to the titular all-Muslim women punk rock band by way of a song about sororicide. "I'm gonna kill my sister!" the lead singer cries, fired up over stolen eyeliner and shoes. ("It's an honour killing / It's an honour killing," chugs the chorus.)
Manzoor's high-octane, genre-mashing debut feature, Polite Society, goes so far as to pit two sisters against each other in a martial arts brawl: Augured by flashy on-screen text reading "Khan vs. Khan", like a Tekken match but set in an upper middle class London home, it entails broken furniture, smashed picture frames, and the weaponisation of a smouldering hair straightener.
In this case, it's more than the sanctity of someone's make-up bag at stake.
The teenage aspiring stuntwoman Ria (Priya Kansara, notably assured in her first leading role) is drawn into combat with the elder Lena (The Umbrella Academy's Ritu Arya) in defence of the primacy of the sister-to-sister bond itself.
A whirlwind courtship by Salim (Akshay Khanna) – the Mr Darcy of the high-powered Muslim high tea crowd in which the elder Khans have found tenuous purchase – has charmed Lena to the point of ditching her fine arts ambitions, as well as the heavy kohl around her eyes, in favour of a hastily arranged marriage. Unimpressed by Salim's suavity or his medical degree, Ria fears that Lena is choosing to betray who she really is; giving up her hard-won identity – which was, like Ria's own, carved out in the face of parental disapproval.
What Ria can't initially see is that her adverse reaction to the betrothal has a lot to do with a fear of losing one of her best friends and co-conspirators. Lena is suddenly unavailable to be Ria's sparring partner or to shoot videos of her practising her martial arts moves (to be posted on her website in the hopes of attracting the attention of her idol, an industry pro with the unlikely name of Eunice). This shift in her sister's priorities registers as a personal betrayal, and Ria is someone who won't be sidelined without a fight.
But kung fu is not her only modus operandi: Having enlisted her besties, aka "the lads", Clara and Alba (Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri, supporting players worth their weight in chuckles), Ria's prepared to attack this problem from all angles. A failed attempt at so-called "diplomacy" gives way to a couple of delightfully cockamamie little capers – very Mission Impossible-lite – designed to expose Salim as being somehow slimier than the hot, baby-saving doctor he appears to be.
And there are signs that maybe something not totally halal is going on: At the lavish "Eid soiree" hosted by Salim's mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha), the setting for his first flirtation with Lena, Ria stumbles into a wood-panelled room with photos of all the eligible women in attendance creepily laid out on a desk; later, she spies through one of the mansion's windows a rather Oedipal scene of Raheela stroking her adult son's head, nestled in her lap.
Is something sinister afoot, or is Salim just an extremely Type-A mama's boy? The truth is obscured by Ria's vivid – some would say overactive – imagination, which gives the film its heightened tone: The viewer sees through her eyes, meaning that a dust-up in the school library takes on the proportions of an Old West showdown, replete with Morricone-esque musical flourishes, and a waxing session at the Salim family fortress plays as Bond-style torture. "You're just running around in your little fantasy land," an exasperated Lena berates her sister.
There are moments in which a viewer might be inclined to share in Lena's sentiment, weary of the elaborate hijinx that derive from Ria's particular strain of 'main character syndrome' – but Manzoor is always a couple of steps ahead, and opts to vindicate her tenacious protagonist right at the tipping point of potential alienation.
By the time of the wedding day, it's become abundantly clear that Ria's meddling is no mere selfish flight of fancy, and is in fact grounded in a keen sense of sisterly intuition. The nuptials devolve into an all-out fight sequence in which high kicks are dished out and gilded saris sent spinning by members of multiple generations, making for a satisfyingly spectacular climax.
Polite Society boldly crosses the spunky charm of Bend It Like Beckham, the previous generation's story of sporty girl power set in a British South Asian milieu, with the genre thrills of Jackie Chan movies – as well as films that ought not be named, in deference to preserving the oomph of Polite Society's various twists and turns.
Wrapped in a kooky – but not irksome – zoomer sensibility that should resonate in the wake of Everything Everywhere All At Once, it's an endearing, polished debut; one that packs a mean punch without sacrificing any heart.
Polite Society is in cinemas now.
