The main character of "Anita and Me" is Meena Kumar, a young girl of Asian descent living in the Black Country mining village of Tollington. (The Black Country is an industrial area in the English Midlands, north and west of Birmingham). The film is based upon the best-selling autobiographical novel by Meera Syal, who grew up in a village like the one portrayed here. Syal herself has a small role as Meena's aunt, while her real-life husband Sanjeev Bhaskar plays Meena's father. The film has some similarities with another British film from 2002, "Bend it Like Beckham", which also dealt with the friendship between an Asian girl and a white girl. One difference, however, is that while "Bend it Like Beckham" has a contemporary setting, "Anita and Me" is a period piece set in 1972 which lovingly recreates the look and feel of the early seventies. Numerous pop songs from the period feature on the soundtrack.
Meena's family are the only Asians living in Tollington- indeed, the only non-white people living there- although they occasionally get together with a group of friends from Birmingham to try and keep their Asian culture alive. Meena, however, has little interest in Asian culture. Her two great ambitions are to have a short story published in "Jackie" (a magazine which had a huge readership among teenage girls at this time) and to be accepted by "the wenches", a gang of girls led by the glamorous blonde Anita, Meena's neighbour and best friend. ("Wench" is a dialect word for girl, largely obsolete in standard English but still used in parts of northern and central England).
Racism is endemic in the village, and the family are not always made welcome by the local people, many of whom casually make reference to "pakis" and "wogs". Prejudice, however, is a two-way street, and in private the Kumars and their friends make disparaging comments about white people and their culture. When Meena, reasonably enough, asks her father why he came to live in England if he dislikes English people so much, he cannot really give her an answer other than "You're too young to understand". He is also given to reminiscing about the part he claims to have played in the Indian independence movement, even though he would have been (at most) a teenager when India gained its independence in 1947.
The differences between the Kumars and their neighbours, however, are as much social as racial. Meena's parents are educated middle-class professionals, which sets them apart from the predominantly working-class villagers. Their main reason for moving to the village was that it lies within the catchment area of a prestigious grammar school, to which they hope Meena will win a scholarship. They have little sympathy with Meena's aspirations to be a writer (they hope she will take up a solid professional career like medicine or accountancy), and even less sympathy with her friendship with Anita and the "wenches", whom they see as vulgar. The grammar of the title may reflect this social divide; Meena's parents and the teachers at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School would doubtless prefer her to use the more formal "Anita and I", but she sticks to the less grammatical form used by most of the villagers. It is notable that Meena, like Anita and the other local people but unlike her parents, speaks with a strong Black Country accent.
The tone of the film becomes for a time more serious when an Asian man is beaten up by a gang of white youths. It transpires that Anita's boyfriend was involved, and when Anita makes it clear that she is standing by him, Meena has to decide where her loyalties lie. Most of the time, however, the tone is fairly light and humorous, with some great comic characters. There are amusing cameos from Lynn Redgrave as the obstinately prejudiced local shopkeeper Mrs Ormerod and from Mark Williams as the middle-aged Methodist minister who tries to be trendy but ends up as simply embarrassing, patronising the young people by his attempts to speak to them in what he fondly imagines to be teenage lingo.
One or two of the Asian characters struck me as a bit exaggerated, especially Meena's eccentric, sword-wielding grandmother, and I wasn't too impressed with some of the colour photography. At times it seemed as though the film had been shot using a camera lens that had accidentally been smeared with marmalade. On the whole, however, I enjoyed the film, especially the very natural performances from two local girls, Anna Brewster as the sluttish Anita and Chandeep Uppal as the delightful young Meena. This was an amusing comedy with a few serious points to make about racial identity and social class. And as I would have been around Meena's age in 1972 it also provided me with a nostalgic trip back to my own past. 7/10
Meena's family are the only Asians living in Tollington- indeed, the only non-white people living there- although they occasionally get together with a group of friends from Birmingham to try and keep their Asian culture alive. Meena, however, has little interest in Asian culture. Her two great ambitions are to have a short story published in "Jackie" (a magazine which had a huge readership among teenage girls at this time) and to be accepted by "the wenches", a gang of girls led by the glamorous blonde Anita, Meena's neighbour and best friend. ("Wench" is a dialect word for girl, largely obsolete in standard English but still used in parts of northern and central England).
Racism is endemic in the village, and the family are not always made welcome by the local people, many of whom casually make reference to "pakis" and "wogs". Prejudice, however, is a two-way street, and in private the Kumars and their friends make disparaging comments about white people and their culture. When Meena, reasonably enough, asks her father why he came to live in England if he dislikes English people so much, he cannot really give her an answer other than "You're too young to understand". He is also given to reminiscing about the part he claims to have played in the Indian independence movement, even though he would have been (at most) a teenager when India gained its independence in 1947.
The differences between the Kumars and their neighbours, however, are as much social as racial. Meena's parents are educated middle-class professionals, which sets them apart from the predominantly working-class villagers. Their main reason for moving to the village was that it lies within the catchment area of a prestigious grammar school, to which they hope Meena will win a scholarship. They have little sympathy with Meena's aspirations to be a writer (they hope she will take up a solid professional career like medicine or accountancy), and even less sympathy with her friendship with Anita and the "wenches", whom they see as vulgar. The grammar of the title may reflect this social divide; Meena's parents and the teachers at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School would doubtless prefer her to use the more formal "Anita and I", but she sticks to the less grammatical form used by most of the villagers. It is notable that Meena, like Anita and the other local people but unlike her parents, speaks with a strong Black Country accent.
The tone of the film becomes for a time more serious when an Asian man is beaten up by a gang of white youths. It transpires that Anita's boyfriend was involved, and when Anita makes it clear that she is standing by him, Meena has to decide where her loyalties lie. Most of the time, however, the tone is fairly light and humorous, with some great comic characters. There are amusing cameos from Lynn Redgrave as the obstinately prejudiced local shopkeeper Mrs Ormerod and from Mark Williams as the middle-aged Methodist minister who tries to be trendy but ends up as simply embarrassing, patronising the young people by his attempts to speak to them in what he fondly imagines to be teenage lingo.
One or two of the Asian characters struck me as a bit exaggerated, especially Meena's eccentric, sword-wielding grandmother, and I wasn't too impressed with some of the colour photography. At times it seemed as though the film had been shot using a camera lens that had accidentally been smeared with marmalade. On the whole, however, I enjoyed the film, especially the very natural performances from two local girls, Anna Brewster as the sluttish Anita and Chandeep Uppal as the delightful young Meena. This was an amusing comedy with a few serious points to make about racial identity and social class. And as I would have been around Meena's age in 1972 it also provided me with a nostalgic trip back to my own past. 7/10