Dispatch #1 From CIFF - Heaven on Earth (2008, Canadian)

It’s a shame that Deepa Mehta directs with such a heavy hand, because the stories she tells are important. In her latest film, she focuses once again on the Indian diaspora, the texture of which she evokes perfectly – the endless relatives packed into a small house, the plain white walls and bright highlights of a Toronto temple – but this time her focus is domestic violence, both mental and physical. Bollywood superstar Preity Zinta plays Chand, an Indian bride married off into a cold family living in a similarly frigid Canadian landscape. From the start, it’s obvious that Chand’s new husband, Rocky (Vanesh Bhardwaj) sees her more as a burden than as a helpmeet, and it’s only a matter of time before his physical aggression towards his bride erupts. Divorced from her support system back in India and unable to fend for herself, Chand begins to cope in a rather unusual way, if indeed it can be said that she is coping.

Stories like this are few and far between in Indian and Indian diasporic filmmaking, which is why I forgive Mehta some of her extravagances – poorly thought-out black-and-white segments, and a somewhat head-scratching departure from the narrative in the second hour – to focus on what she does well. Both Zinta and Bhardwaj are very good, and though the composition of Chand’s new family is a bit uniformly depressing for my taste, Mehta and her cast does a very good job of evoking subtle differences in character. No one here is a caricature of an Indian or an NRI (Non-Resident Indian). It’s a shame that Mehta is not a better stylist of either narration or visuals, but as I’ve mentioned already, she has a careful eye for the details of this particular kind of life. Chand’s Canadian home felt like a real place, and her struggle is sadly all too real as well.