When sisters fight, it can be ferocious. But Polite Society, the debut feature of Nida Manzoor, creator of Channel 4’s We Are Lady Parts, takes those squabbles to a new extreme. When Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena Khan (Ritu Arya) butt heads, they do so literally. They palm strike. They calf kick. They hurl each other through doors. It’s one of the many fight sequences in Manzoor’s funny, rambunctious blend of coming-of-age comedy and martials arts extravaganza. They reflect not only of Ria’s dreams of becoming a Hollywood stunt performer, but the way teenage conflicts often feel propelled by a life-or-death urgency.
And, to the zealously ambitious Ria, there’s nothing that quite spells death like matrimony. When Lena, an art college drop-out, falls for the ideal bachelor (Akshay Khanna’s Salim) – a rich, devastatingly handsome philanthropist – it forces Ria into crisis mode. With the help of her friends, Alba (Ella Bruccoleri) and Clara (Seraphina Beh), she hatches a series of increasingly elaborate schemes to liberate her older sibling from the binds of courtship and the domineering gaze of her future mother-in-law Raheela (Nimra Bucha).
