Coming of age stories come in different packages. But Nida Manzoor’s new film about two British-Pakistani sisters and the marriage that threatens to tear them apart isn’t looking to fit into just one box.
“Polite Society”’ – a martial arts saga filled with adventure, comedy, drama, and everything in between – can be a bit turbulent in its execution, not quite following some themes through to their end and genre-hopping within an inch of its life. But that particular brand of mayhem is perfectly in tune with the movie’s lead performance and gives the film an energy that’s just as infectious as the sisters at its core. In spite of the chaos – or maybe because of it – “Polite Society” operates with so much flair and so much verve, it’s hard not to leave with a smile on your face.
The Khan girls have always been ambitious. Ria (Priya Kansara) longs to be a stuntwoman and spends her days practicing martial arts and making videos for her YouTube channel – often with her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) shouting words of encouragement from behind the camera. Lena, on the other hand, has just returned home after a bad stint in art school. She always wanted to be an artist, but she’s suffering from a bad bout of insecurity, and desperately putting on a strong front so Ria won’t see.
Ria, however, has no doubt that her sister will get back on track. So when the girls’ parents set Lena up with Salim (Akshay Khanna) – a wealthy, attractive doctor – Ria thinks of it as nothing more than a passing fancy – a good shag, if you will. But much to her horror, the two end up engaged to be married. What’s a budding martial artist to do? Try to break up the engagement, of course.
“Polite Society” is Manzoor’s first feature film, and it feels like that in the best sense of the phrase. Manzoor throws everything at the wall, giving the film the chaotic edge that often comes with a first feature, like the filmmaker needs to show us everything they can do in case they never get the chance again. In this case, it doesn’t feel like Manzoor is trying to put every thematic idea she’s ever had up on screen, but rather show us everything she can do stylistically.
“Polite Society” is, at its core, an action movie. Almost every conflict in the film is solved with a fight, whether it be in the school library or a teenage girl’s bedroom. The camera circles each particular fight’s warriors like a predator, zooming in on their squinted eyes and snarled mouths before they face off – all topped off with western-style music cues to set the scene. Even when the conflict isn’t handled physically, the filmmaking is still reminiscent of a brawl. When Ria and Lena’s mother (Shobu Kapoor) first meets with Salim’s mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha) and a group of other women for tea, the camera still circles them in that same predatory manner, peering down on the girls’ mother in a way that makes her look and feel small as she defends her daughters to the other women, their smiles as sharp as knives.
But while the martial arts of it all stays constant throughout, “Polite Society” runs the gamut of genres. It’s a teen comedy before switching to the warm, fuzzy atmosphere of a first date in a rom-com. It’s a family dramedy before morphing into a “Mission Impossible” style heist movie, complete with wall-scaling and disguises to boot. One particularly exhilarating sequence turns Ria’s first experience with waxing into a straight-up gangster film, starring Salim’s mother as the mob boss emerging from the shadows to lightly threaten Ria while she’s held down by a bunch of lackey estheticians.
That constant switching keeps you on your toes and keeps you laughing, but it also signals that while a bit of chaos might give you an energetic burst stylistically, it can also muddle your thematic storytelling. There’s a tension throughout “Polite Society” between wanting to protect your family while also giving them the grace to make their own choices. Ria is a wonderful young protagonist, a vibrant and messy teenage girl with all the confusion that entails. She’s cocky, she always thinks she’s right, and she’s unmovable – stubborn to a fault. What’s most difficult for her to accept about Lena’s engagement is not that it’s happening in the first place, but that Lena is happy about it.
We don’t spend as much time with Lena as we do Ria, but the moments we do see between her and Salim betray a genuine affection and a desire for an understanding that her sister can’t quite give. Lena is unmoored after her apparently disastrous time in art school, and Ria’s stalwart belief in her often becomes more of a burden than a gift. Salim offers her a different kind of belief, some comfort in her aimlessness, a reassurance that it’s okay to feel lost.
Manzoor has cited Jackie Chan and Edgar Wright as personal inspirations, and that’s more than clear in her filmmaking style. But in so many of Ria and Lena’s interactions, I was reminded of a scene from Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” Just before Meg’s wedding, her sister Jo tries to convince her to run away. For Jo, marriage means the end of childhood. The sisters will never be just sisters again. Meg is understanding of this, but says to Jo: “Just because my dreams are different than yours doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”
I thought about this interaction a lot during “Polite Society.” That idea of childhood ending is exactly what Ria is afraid of, and the idea that Lena would leave her willingly is almost too much to bear. Watching Ria throughout the first part of the film, we’re primed for her to come to the realization that she can’t hold on to her sister forever. That doesn’t mean they love each other any less, but things will have to change eventually.
And then, the movie switches gears, as it so often does, and leaves that fraught emotional conflict in the dust for the most part. Through a series of twists, by its end “Polite Society” becomes less about overcoming that difficult transition in your life and more about the sisters coming together for its final, exuberant set piece. Ria still evolves, but she also gets to have her cake and eat it too,
While you might leave “Polite Society” wishing for more of a reckoning between the two sisters, there is something to be said for the satisfaction those final moments give you. There’s so much vivacity and intimacy between the two sisters, it’s impossible not to root for them to stay together by the end.