5. Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Language: English

Director: Gurinder Chadha

Running time: 112

Starring: Parminder K Nagra, Keira Knightley, Anupam Kher, Juliet Stevenson

Company: BSkyB/Bend It Films/British Screen/Film Council/Filmforderung Hamburg/Helkon Media

AG/Kintop Pictures/Road Movies Filmproduktion/Roc Media/Works and Future Film Financing

Chadha's third feature is a romance fantasy about a Punjabi girl from Hounslow making it big in the local women's football league against the opposition of her family and managing to find prince charming as well in the form of her football coach. The film zips through a series of comic confrontations and

interactions between various protagonists located on either side of gender, race and age divisions in order to present a picture of multicultural Britain of the 21st century that is both of the present and the future. An endless litany of planes flying over the Hounslow skies, adequate doses of well-paced ironic dialogue supported by a sharp cast help to bring the loose-ended episodes to a happy culmination as

the heroine finally manages to bend it like Beckham. Is football going to be the next thing big thing after the curry to bring South Asians and the British together?