By: Kimberly Grant
Let’s be real, Polite Society’s title should have been “A Tale of Two Sisters”. But you can’t change the past and Polite Society is an official 2023 Sundance Film Festival Selection.
Polite Society will be in theaters on April 28.
A Tale of Two Sisters
In Polite Society we meet two sisters who defy social norms. Teenager Ria Khan (played by Priya Kansara) is an aspiring stuntwoman who writes endless emails to her idol, Eunice Huthart. Ria attends an all-girls private school in the UK, where she and her friends, Clara (Seraphina Beh), Alba (Ella Bruccoleri), and Kovacs (Shona Babayemi), like to play action heroes and spies. Only, they’re kinda good at it.
Ria’s older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), is a struggling painter and art school dropout. Lena falls for a doctor, Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna), who looks good on paper, but his mother Raheela Shah (Nimra Bucha, who also plays the villain in Ms. Marvel) is all kinds of scheming evil. Ria knows something is off about Salim and his mother, she just needs to figure out what it is.
Written For Those Who Aren’t Polite
Polite Society was written and directed by Nida Manzoor, who’s also directed episodes of Doctor Who. If you like Ms. Marvel and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), then you’ll love Polite Society. Both have a few things in common. Leading ladies fight for justice and what’s right. These ladies are women of color who are members of Indian and Muslim cultures. (Kamala is of Indian descent and her family is of the Muslim faith and traditions. Ria is of Pakistani descent and her family has Indian customs and traditions.) The beauty of both characters is that they’re multifaceted with a lot of heart.
Manzoor and Kansara manage to strike a delicate balance between the audience believing Ria’s suspicions and wondering if she’s imagining the entire scenario. Do we, the audience, trust Salim and his mother, or not? I won’t spoil the film for you. Just know that you won’t be disappointed. Now on to Ria’s other half: Lena.
From the start of the movie, you feel bad for Lena. She’s stuck in an artistic rut and spiraling into madness. Then Salim enters the picture, making Lena happy. You’re rooting for her, because she comes out of her shell and then her sister steps in to tell her something is wrong. And, the audience still doesn’t know what to believe.
Generational Divide
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the subtle ways Manzoor shows the divide between the older and younger women of the film. Ria’s mother, Fatima Khan (Shobu Kapoor), and Raheela are acquaintances in the same social circle. Naturally, their circle values the right marriage with the right breeding. The ultimate prize being a young woman marrying a man of means. If I had to guess, I would say these women are a part of Generation X or Baby Boomers. When they were in their twenties, their only option was to marry well if they planned to have any kind of social status in life.
Compare their experiences to modern times where girls of Indian and Muslim descent can choose to (or not to) get married. They have the freedom to explore their potential. Unlike brown women in the X and Baby Boomer generations (and before). The older generations of women had untapped potential that was never cultivated. The very idea is unfair.
Polite Society toys with the notion that, sometimes, the women who couldn’t aspire to be more than just wives and mothers resent the newer generations who have a wider range of opportunities. The younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z in particular) aren’t forced to exist in polite society. They can be whoever they want to be.
Sister Soldiers
Manzoor’s film is not like any regular action film. There are some shades of Bollywood-type tropes mixed in with a Mission Impossible-style caper and lots of acting talents. There are action sequences where the women really get to kick some butt. And it definitely passes the Bechdel test. This Tale of Two Sisters is definitely a nice addition to female-centric action films in the vein of Captain Marvel and, of course, Ms. Marvel.
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