Rated: M
Directed and Written by: Geeta Malik
Produced by: John Penotti, Sidney Kimmel, Gigi Pritzker, Naomi Despres
Starring: Sophia Ali, Manisha Koirala, Rish Shah, Adil Hussain, Deepti Gupta, Anita Kalathara.
India Sweets and Spices presents a feast of Indian food and a glittering array of saris as the residents of Ruby Hill dress to the hilt for a weekly rotation of dinner parties during the holiday season. When Alia (Sophia Ali), the eldest daughter a successful heart surgeon (Adil Hussain), returns home from her first year away at university she is expected to play the role of demure Indian daughter looking to attract a suitable husband at these gatherings, but she has long ago outgrown her part. Now she cannot even pretend that she doesn’t find life in this bourgeois Indian enclave utterly stultifying. On the night before her departure she confides to a friend that it’s: ‘The place where brain cells go to die’.
During her time at UCLA, Alia has become heavily involved in social justice issues and takes it as her right that she is entitled to speak out and act upon what she believes in. Much to the horror of her mother. Sheila (Manisha Koirala) is not only a bored but devoted housewife and hostess extraordinaire, she is also the unofficial queen of the Ruby Hill social scene, and she is a woman with a past. It is a secret she has been keeping from her children and the community. In a community where everyone has a secret.
Once a haven for new arrivals looking to safely establish themselves in their adopted country, Ruby Hill has over time become a locked cage, where the corrosive tongues of ‘the aunties’ not only keep the residents in and in line but also keep new arrivals out. On the surface life is uncomplicated and easy in this enclave of backyard swimming pools, luxury vehicles and fantasy weddings where a groom might ride in on a tiger, but the entire community is being held hostage to the threat of exposure and embarrassment. It is a powerful deterrent, but the carefully manicured web of illusion this coterie has cultivated around themselves is impossible to maintain, even with the most watchful of blind eyes.
When Alia locks eyes with her new beau (Rish Shah) in the biscuit aisle of the local Indian grocery store and on impulse invites him and his family to a weekly dinner party, it will tug at a thread that will eventually unravel all of the secrets. Beginning with, possibly, the biggest secrets of all. The ones her own family have been keeping from her.
This feminist romantic comedy/ coming of age drama begins with a finely wrought script from Geeta Malik, with some precisely-calibrated lines for Alia to deploy against the ‘aunties’. Originally reading for the part of Alia’s best friend Neha (Anita Kalathara), Sophia Ali has been beautifully cast Alia Kapur as she tenaciously pursues the question, ‘What if we are who we are and then we don’t recognise ourselves anymore?’ It’s not only a question for Alia; the conundrum equally applies to Sheila and Ranjit when their secrets are finally revealed. As it is, perhaps, for many more in their circle.