February 14–21, 2002

movie shorts

ABCD

by Sam Adams

recommended

Set, like last year’s American Chai, among a community of Indian immigrants living in North Jersey, Krutin Patel’s ABCD is similarly focused on the complexities of growing up between cultures and the generational conflict between Old World parents and their Westernized children. But while the former film foundered beneath the weight of its genre-driven expectations, ABCD manages to work in a good deal of complexity among the stock devices. (The title, incidentally, stands for "American-Born Confused Desi," desi being, as one character puts it, "the Indian word for Indians." The term doesn’t fully apply to any of the film’s characters, but the "confused" part is clear enough.)

Raj (Faran Tahir) and Nina (Sheetal Sheth) are the only children of the widowed Anju (Merchant Ivory regular Madhur Jaffrey), each of whom is stuck between their own desires and their dedication to their mother. Having emigrated from India when they were 6 and 8, the children barely remember their country of birth, but their mother alone would be enough to remind them of their obligations. Nina’s had a series of short (sometimes very short) relationships with what seem to be exclusively white men, while Raj is beginning to feel suffocated in his engagement to his tradition-minded Indian fiancee Tejal (Adriane Forlana Erdos). Anju, played by Jaffrey with just the right comic edge, wants only the best for her children — assuming that "best" means meeting all of her expectations. Forever nagging Nina to date a nice Indian boy (her relationship advice consists of "maybe if you learned how to make samosas, you’d meet someone nice") and smothering Raj with her expectations, who’s so used to being the ideal son that he can’t bear to tell his mother when things don’t go according to plan.

Patel and James McManus’ script introduces a series of fairly predictable, mainly romantic complications: Raj becomes attracted to a white co-worker, while Nina finally does fall for a nice Indian boy, then freaks out when he proposes after a week. Patel develops his plot ably, if sometimes without inspiration; though the acting in the three central roles is sometimes very good, the supporting parts verge from serviceable to cringe-worthy. The film’s conclusion, moreover, feels arbitrarily downbeat, as if mandated by the (false) assumption that unhappy endings are more profound than happy ones. It would be one thing if the film had shown more tonal variation up until its last 15 minutes, but as it is, it feels as if the first four-fifths and the last came from two different movies.

That said, there’s a lot to be admired in ABCD, and not just because the film’s subject matter guarantees it a virtually empty playing field. Though Patel reduces racial issues to brown and white, his three main characters are developed enough to give you a sense of the spectrum. Like its title, ABCD may be only the beginning, but it’s a good start.

(Roxy)