''Chutney Popcorn'' is a 1999 comedy-drama film starring, directed and co-written by

Nisha Ganatra Nisha Ganatra (born June 25, 1974) is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actress of Indian descent. She wrote, directed, and produced the independent comedy drama ''Chutney Popcorn'' (1999) and later directed the indepe ...

. Ganatra plays a young

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

Indian American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...

woman called Reena.

Jill Hennessy Jillian Noel Hennessy (born November 25, 1968) is a Canadian actress and singer. She is most known for her roles on the American television series ''Law & Order'', on which she played prosecutor Claire Kincaid for three seasons, and ''Crossing ...

plays her girlfriend Lisa and Reena's mother and sister are played by real life mother and daughter

Madhur Jaffrey Madhur Jaffrey CBE (née Bahadur; born 13 August 1933) is an Indian-British-American actress, food and travel writer, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing Indian cuisine to the western hemisphere with her debut cookbook, ...

and

Sakina Jaffrey Sakina Jaffrey (born February 14, 1962) is an American actress. Early life Jaffrey was born in New York City, the youngest daughter of Indian-born parents, actress and food and travel writer Madhur Jaffrey, and actor Saeed Jaffrey. Her parents ...

. The film explores the conflict between Reena's sexual and national identities as well as her mother Meenu's attempts to come to terms with the Western lives of both her daughters.

Plot

Reena is a young Indian American lesbian who lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Her sister Sarita, who is happily married, discovers that she is

infertile Infertility is the inability of a person, animal or plant to reproduce by natural means. It is usually not the natural state of a healthy adult, except notably among certain eusocial species (mostly haplodiploid insects). It is the normal state ...

. Reena offers to be a

surrogate mother Surrogacy is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labour for another person or people, who will become the child's parent(s) after birth. People may seek a surrogacy arrangement when pregnan ...

for her sister's baby, hoping to improve her relationship with their mother, who disapproves of Reena's

sexual orientation Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generall ...

. Sarita and her husband accept Reena's offer but Sarita begins to have second thoughts. After Reena becomes pregnant, her relationship with her girlfriend Lisa suffers. When the baby is born, Reena and Lisa are reunited, as are Reena's family.

Cast

as ''Reena'' *

as ''Lisa'' *

as ''Sarita'' *

as ''Meenu'' *

Nick Chinlund Zareh Nicholas Chinlund (born November 18, 1961) is an American actor. Early life and education Chinlund was born in New York City. He attended the Friends Seminary in Lower Manhattan, later moving to Albany, New York in order to participate in ...

as ''Mitch'' *

Cara Buono Cara Buono (born 1973/1974) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Dr. Faye Miller in the fourth season of the AMC drama series ''Mad Men''; Kelli Moltisanti in the sixth season of ''The Sopranos''; Linda Salvo in the 2006 ...

as ''Janis'' *

Ajay Naidu Ajay Kalahastri Naidu (born February 12, 1972) is an American actor best known for playing Samir in ''Office Space''. Naidu was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the film ''SubUrbia''. Ear ...

as ''Raju'' * Daniella Rich as ''Tiffany''

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 19 reviews. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

the film has a score of 66 out of 100 based on reviews from 8 critics.

Awards

''Chutney Popcorn'' won several film festival awards between 1999 and 2001 including at the

San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival The Frameline Film Festival (aka San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival) (formerly San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival) began as a storefront event in 1976. The first ...

, the Paris Lesbian Film Festival and L.A. Outfest. It was nominated for a

GLAAD Media Award The GLAAD Media Award is an accolade bestowed by GLAAD to recognize and honor various branches of the media for their outstanding representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and the issues that affect their live ...

for Outstanding TV Movie in 2001.

References

External links