East Is East

Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jordan Routledge (1999).

Director Damien O'Donnell's social comedy proved a 'sleeper' for the makers, a TV-sized movie that crossed into mainstream cinema and did (still does) enormous business, especially with the Pakistani communities.

It's the story of a Pakistani patriarch (Om Puri), a little to Genghis Khan's right in family matters, who has to learn humility and recognise the changing lifestyles of his seven children.

It's a very funny film in many ways, a sad one in others: perhaps that mix is partly its secret.

The kids' religious slackness is seen hilariously in the opening as they join a Roman Catholic festival procession, but have to make strategic detours through the back streets to avoid their terrifying dad.

Arranged marriages, sexual deviance and general disobedience come under scrutiny. So, too, unfortunately, does wife-beating and the scene where Linda Bassett, as Puri's Anglo-Saxon wife, gets badly knocked about is - be warned - painful to watch.

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