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The Delectable Qualities of Polite Society


2023 may prove to be the year of great British comedy debuts from sharp BIPOC talents. Just a couple months ago, Raine Allen-Miller’s Rye Lane dropped to Disney+, a stylish and sweet rom-com that spotlighted black culture in South London. And now out from that same Sundance Festival that gave us Rye Lane is Polite Society, from Nida Manzoor -one of the better directors of recent Doctor Who and creator of the acclaimed sitcom We Are Lady Parts- a clever and unabashedly goofy action-comedy about a British-Pakistani teenager desperate to thwart her sister’s arranged marriage. It’s the most fun I’ve had at a movie since Dungeons & Dragons, albeit with only a fraction of the audience and the fun more consistently coming from the screen. It is an infectiously confident and charming work -delightful to behold.
It shares a lot in common with Rye Lane in this and other respects -perhaps most interesting being this too is a movie centred on a character passionate about a film discipline that is not the overused staples of acting or directing. Ria Khan, played by newcomer Priya Kansara with all the natural poise and charisma of a comedy veteran, is an aspiring stuntwoman -something taken seriously by no one in her life except her close friends and her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya), back home after dropping out of art school. The relationship between these sisters is naturally the foundation on which the story is built; these two young women -each a kind of rebel to their cultural expectations- bonded through a deep, sincere support of one another, at least until an engagement.
And it’s astonishing that it takes so little to establish this so strongly -a testament certainly to Kansara and Arya’s chemistry, but also Manzoor’s warm depiction of the general tenor of their relationship. Essentially they are introduced with Ria trying to get Lena to shoot a martial arts video for her social media by literally dragging her out of bed for it -Lena is resistant, but it’s clear she’ll do anything for Ria whenever she needs it. Ria is about the only person since her post-college slump who can bring her out of her shell. The two don’t honestly get a whole lot of scenes together before the climax, but the vitality of their relationship is so firmly established within these opening scenes that it’s easy to share in Ria’s anxiety over the prospect of Lena marrying a guy she just met and flying off to Singapore.
Manzoor plays for a while with this dismay and subsequent scheming on Ria’s part being entirely irrational and an exercise in simply her inability to let go of her sister -which it is. Lena’s relationship with Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna) seems totally normal and healthy in spite of his wealth, family traditionalism, and overbearing mother Raheela (a scenery-chewing Nimra Bucha). There’s even the bones of an argument sympathetic towards arranged marriages, in the form of rationalizations from Ria’s parents. And in this context there’s a sense of goofy family movie fun to Ria and her friends Clara (Seraphina Beh) and Alba (Ella Bruccoleri) trying to thwart the courtship or find damaging information on Salim -in pursuit of the latter the movie stages a great sequence at a gym that is downright inspired in it’s uncompromising silliness. While the movie operates under this light antic-driven premise, it builds out Ria’s world and personality well -the adventurous nature that accounts so much for her action-focused passion. But eventually Manzoor pulls the rug out from the apparently baseless roots of Ria’s suspicion, and a far more elaborate, sinister plot takes effect.
It’s all a little reminiscent of those 2000s kids’ movies (usually centring kids) that built elaborate world-shaking scenarios out of seemingly grounded set-ups: Agent Cody Banks, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, or syndicated cartoon movie adaptations that rest in my personal nostalgia like Recess: School’s Out and Hey Arnold: The Movie. Polite Society brings the relatable youth-against-the-establishment fun of those kind of movies, but with a sharper, mature sensibility hinged on authentic emotional stakes, a sustained attention to craft and wry tonal character, and the unique aspects of its cultural specificity. Ria’s pivotal encounter with the main villain of the piece is within this kind of context, and then of course later the action-packed climax takes place amidst all the vibrancy and regalia of an expensive Muslim wedding. The set-pieces and cultural ephemera give off a distinct colour, and many might compare the last act to Bollywood off the costumes alone –granted, there is a comparable level of flare to the piece; even in the more dramatic beats Manzoor’s enthusiasm is palpable and intoxicating.
And her instincts are remarkably sharp where the film’s energy is concerned, driven by a humour built in large part out of her characters as much as a sense of absurdity in the plot. It really does get absurd in a couple bewildering ways, the movie leaning into the kind of weird contrivances that characterize many of the kind of action movies that Ria is in love with. Ria’s overzealous convictions as well as her imagination are also a particularly potent tool in the hands of Kansara, who can make the roots inherently earnest, even as it manifests in harsh or delusional ways. You sympathize with the personal value she places in the idea of her sister as an artist, even as Lena seems permanently discouraged and disillusioned with art as a passion. Just as well, her desperate pursuit of martial arts and idolization of Eunice Huthart (stuntwoman on Bond movies, the Tomb Raider series, and Titanic among others), in spite of what appears to be middling talent in the area has the effect of being heartfelt and charming -purely off of her hopeless fervour for it.
This estimation proves not to be the case eventually though, and where the movie does get into the action, it’s not so stylized as might be expected, though certainly immensely thrilling for the tension built into it. Manzoor directs the sequences as someone without specific experience per se, but with a lot of research and enthusiasm for the martial arts genre; able to approach it from an angle of raw coolness and making creative choices in some of the choreography and use of external elements, like props or articles of clothing, that give the sequences a fresh and slick spontaneity. Both Kansara and Arya are impeccably capable, the former especially handling the action with an astonishing tenacity. That last act is truly a revelation of the diversity of Kansara’s talents, and I hope she’s given continued opportunities to express them. Because she carries a lot of this movie on her shoulders and seems to do so with relative ease.
From planting condoms to an attempted kidnapping and in it’s witty attitude to it’s charming sentiment, Polite Society is an unrelenting delight by just about every metric. It’s the most fundamentally joyful movie I’ve seen in quite some time, I was shocked by how easily it resonated. Of course it’s the kind of bombastic original comedy I wish we saw more of, but then I wouldn’t depreciate the thrill of it’s singular idiosyncrasies for anything. Don’t miss The Fury. See it where you can!

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