Bend It Like Beckham

  

Written and Directed by Gurinder Chadha

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for language and sexual content.

Runtime: 112 min

 

Starring: Parminder K. Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Anupam Kher

 

This movie is a natural for Helena, a city with a great tradition of girls’ soccer, the touching and genuine story of a great young female soccer player who bucks the odds to succeed in athletics.  Parminder Nagra plays Jesminder Bhamra, the teenage daughter of a Sikh immigrant and his similarly traditional wife living in middle-class England.  A talented athlete, Jesmin is noticed by her soon-to-be friend Juliette, played by Keira Knightly, and convinced to try out for an elite girls’ soccer team.  The longing streams from the talented Nagra’s eyes as she considers the challenge of breaking into the male bastion of football; a decision made all the harder by her parent’s undying opposition to her athletic dreams.  But, thank goodness, she takes the plunge and a great movie is born.

 

Parminder Nagra was born in England and at 28 years of age has developed into a very talented actress.  She played in the TV series “ER” in 1994 and has had TV and film appearances since, but this is her first starring role in a feature film.  Watch out for this woman, she will be a force to be reckoned with on the silver screen, as she is on the soccer pitch in “Beckham.”  Her soccer buddy is played by Keira Knightly, who, at 20 years old, undoubtedly finds it easier to act like a teenager.  Keira has past performances in “Star Wars” and other movie and TV appearances.  She was also born and raised in England.  Rounding the trio of protagonists is Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Joe the soccer coach, over-the-hill at too young an age due to his father’s brutal exploitation as a young soccer player.  Rhys-Meyers is best known in independent film circles for his role in Mike Figgis “Loss of Sexual Innocence,” in 1999, a complex, exploratory film of humanity’s fall from grace.

  

“Beckham” is a coming-of-age story about a girl’s awakening awareness of her potential as an athlete and as a human being.  Jesmin’s desire to succeed in a male-dominated sport is challenged not only by the overwhelming macho image of English football, but by the devils of racial bigotry that haunt her parents.  She must fight on two fronts at the same time.  The first is to prove that women can succeed as athletes and the second is to prove that ethnic minorities can succeed as citizens of the western world.

 

Complicating matters is her own emerging sexual identity and her feelings towards her tragic but powerful soccer coach, Joe.  Jonathon Rhys-Meyers plays a very strong part as the counter-balance to Jesmin’s soccer-phobic parents.  His father forced him to play until he was crippled by injury.  Is there no humanity left in parenthood?  By the halfway point in the movie we doubt it, but there is still more to tell.

 

This combination of combustibles is aggravated by her sister’s impending wedding.  The wedding is to be completely traditional, in the ways of the old-country Sikhs.  The father decks the house out with lights as a lonely jet takes off low overhead from Heathrow.  Is this jet a sign of the “affordable” neighborhood of the Sikhs in London?  Or is it technology and the western world coming in low and strafing the traditions of its new citizens?   The parents are elated at the “success” of the wedding as the older sister has accepted a suitor from a wealthier family and therefore has elevated family in the social pecking-order.  When Jesmin goes shopping under the pretense of buying shoes for the wedding and is caught with new soccer shoes instead, the bald humor flies from the screen like a shot off the laces.  Maybe that low-flying jet was actually a bomber.

 

So as her father climbs the ladder to mount the wedding lights, the parents climb the social ladder at the same time, and want Jesmin to do the same.  But the forces at work are not as simple as they seem.  The parents are not so much fighting for the upward mobility of their daughters as they are to steer clear of the racism that left its scar on Jesmin’s father.  He knows his daughter is a talented athlete, as he is, but he can’t bear to have her exposed to the racial bigotry that is part of his secret past.

 

Balancing the fearful secrets of Jasmine’s family, Juliet Stevenson plays a hilarious role as the mother of Jasmine’s friend and soccer cohort.  Juliet fears not for her daughter’s safety or for the hurt engendered by the backlash of the male sports establishment, but for the young soccer player’s breast size.  As her daughter Juliette copes with the demands of the soccer pitch and her own undeniable attraction to Joe, her redoubtable mother tries to sell the benefits of inflatable bra implants that could make Billie Jean King look like Dolly Parton.  Love, all!

 

Americans love underdogs, and it’s hard not to love the young heroine in “Beckham.”  Americans live the Cinderella dream where anyone can be anything.  We have no kings and queens in this country, we all get what we work for.  At least those of us who are not crushed under the heal of bigotry in the process.  But the athletic dream works, none-the-less, in this movie and others like it, such as “Jim Thorpe-All American,” the 1951 film of the tragic life of one of the greatest natural athletes ever known, the Native American Jim Thorpe (superbly portrayed by Burt Lancaster).  Maybe it took films (and people) like “Thorpe” to pave the way for the success of actresses like Parminder Nagra.

 

The other genre at play here is the tribulations of the modern emigrant, wherein the off-spring of the emigrant sometimes fit in too well in their new found land.  An example of this is the 1997 movie by Udayan Prasad, “My Son the Fanatic.”  The film stars Om Puri as Parvez, the Pakistani taxi drive whose son is becoming an Islamic extremist and Rachel Griffiths as his hooker friend and confident.  Om Puri wants nothing more than beans on his plate and a college education for his bright young son.  But his son wants the real American Dream, change, with an option of violence.

 

This is a well done film, with a powerful musical score that combines the brilliance of east and west, wonderful costumes and faultless cinematography.  Throughout “Beckham” the jets come and go over Jesmin’s house, signaling the wedding is on, it’s off, her love for Joe is on, it’s off, her soccer future is on, it’s off.  And finally, in the last shot of the jet taking off from Heathrow, we know it carries not only Jesmin but the dream of young soccer players everywhere, to “Bend It Like Beckham.”