My Son the Fanatic, 1997, Miramax, British, 87 minutes, color. Directed by Udayan Prasad. Screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. Starring Om Puri, as Parvez, Rachel Griffiths as Bettina, Stellan Skarsgard as Schitz, Akbar Kurtha as Farid, Gopi Desai as Minoo, Harish Patel as Fizzy and Sarah-Jane Potts as Madelaine. Rating: Eight and one-half stars out of 10.
My Son the Fanatic, a tale of an Indian London cabby trying to deal with his son's radical Islamic conversion, is too often described as a comedy. It's humorous in parts, but it's really a story about love, and the gut-wrenching need we all have for physical love. As Orwell puts it, the sex instinct is instinctive, and being without is akin to hunger.
Parvez has been cabby for at least two decades. He cruises through London at night, and become accustomed to the underbelly of the city. He frequently picks up prostitutes on their rounds, and has befriended one, Bettina, played by Rachel Griffiths, who manages to look both seedy and adorable in the film. My Son the Fanatic opens at a dinner party at the home of Parvez's son Farid's pretty fiance, a white London girl named Madelaine. Her parents obviously dislike their daughter's choice of relations, but it appears obvious only to Farid. Soon afterwards, he breaks off the engagement, throws away all his "western˙ influences, and becomes a very judgmental Islamic fundamentalist who is quick to criticize his dad. The one weak part of a very strong film is that not enough time is allowed to observe Farid's conversion. It just seems to happen.
Parvez, quite understandably, can't understand why his son has become a stranger. Soon there are chanting judgmental Islamic extremists living in his house, frowning at his jazz music and keeping his Indian wife Minoo in the kitchen. He's disillusioned when Minoo sides with Farid. He unburdens himself to Bettina, and they soon fall in love and begin a sexual relationship, although she is still hooking. The screenwriter Kureishi is very talented at portraying sex. The sex between Parvez and Bettina is not glamorous. It's not soft focused or accompanied by elevator music. It's real. It's two lonely, needy, unglamorous people making love and clinging to each other. In a moving scene, Parvez wonders out loud why it is so wrong for him to be loved and seek love. At the end, both Parvez and Minoo walk out on Parvez, but he's with Bettina, with whom he can be loved.
Racism is also explored in My Son the Fanatic. There is a strong scene where Bettina stands up to a lout who is teasing Parvez. There's another scene where Parvez tries to bear with dignity the bigoted jokes of a low nightclub comic. A subplot to the film involves a boorish German, Skarsgard, in London on business who Parvez steers toward Bettina. After learning that he beats Bettina, Parvez deals with the man's patronizing attitude by standing up to him, and by the end of the film he has earned the bigot's grudging respect, or perhaps fear. The talented actor Harish Patel, who was marvelous as Changez in the film version of Kureishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia, plays Fizzy, an Indian restaurant owner and friend of Parvez who disapproves of his relationship with Bettina.