Mira Nair
USA, India | 2006 | 122mins | 35mm | Colour
In the capable hands of director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding), Jhumpa Lahiri’s popular novel about two generations of a Bengali family receives a loving, deeply felt screen translation.
A young man enters into an arranged marriage with the beautiful Ashima, whom he has never met before. Together, they travel to New York City in the late 1970s, and begin their new American lives. Over the next twenty years their son struggles to find his own cultural identity; including romancing a WASP-y Manhattan princess who invites him for weekends at Oyster Bay and says things like “Everyone loves truffles”.
With a sensitivity and emotional resonance that elude most films on the subject of cultural assimilation, The Namesake is a richly compelling story of family and self-discovery.
Variety |
