''Polite Society'' is a 2023 British

martial arts Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practiced for a number of reasons such as self-defense; military and law enforcement applications; combat sport, competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; a ...

action comedy film written and directed by

Nida Manzoor Nida Manzoor is a British television writer and director. She is best known for directing two episodes of ''Doctor Who'' and creating the Peacock/Channel 4 comedy show ''We Are Lady Parts'', for which she won the 2021 Rose d'Or Emerging Talent ...

(in her feature film directorial debut). The film stars Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya,

Nimra Bucha Nimra Bucha ( ur, ) is a Pakistani actress who has appeared in variety of TV serials, films, web-series and has also worked in theatre. She played a role of Saadat Hassan Manto's muse in Sarmad Khoosat's ''Manto (2015 film), Manto'' which earne ...

Akshay Khanna Akshaye Khanna (born 28 March 1975) is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi films. He is the son of actor Vinod Khanna. He has won numerous awards in his career including two Filmfare Awards, three Screen Awards and two IIFA Awards in varied a ...

, Seraphina Beh, Ella Bruccoleri, Shona Babayemi, Shobu Kapoor, and

Jeff Mirza Jeffrey Mirza (born 3 February 1964) is an English stand-up comedian and actor of British-Pakistani descent. Early life Mirza was born and brought up in East End of London, England to Pakistani parents. His family are from the Punjab region o ...

. The film follows teenager Ria Khan, who struggles to save her older sister, Lena, after she decides to give up on her dreams and get married. ''Polite Society'' had its world premiere at the

2023 Sundance Film Festival The 2023 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to 29, 2023. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 7, 2022. Films U.S. Dramatic Competition * ''The Accidental Getaway Driver'', directed by Sing J. Lee * ...

on 21 January 2023, and was released in the United Kingdom and the United States on 28 April 2023 by

Focus Features Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as part of Universal Pictures, a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in th ...

. The film received favourable reviews from critics.

Plot

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

British-Pakistani British Pakistanis ( ur, (Bratānia men maqīm pākstānī); also known as Pakistani British people or Pakistani Britons) are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots lie in Pakistan. This includes people born in ...

teenager Ria Khan aspires to become a movie

stunt performer A stunt performer, often called a stuntman or stuntwoman and occasionally stuntperson or stunt-person, is a trained professional who performs daring acts, often as a career. Stunt performers usually appear in films or on television, as opposed ...

like her idol,

Eunice Huthart Eunice Huthart (born 2 November 1966) is best known for winning ''Gladiators (1992 British TV series), Gladiators'' and then being invited to return to the show as a Gladiator herself, under the name "Blaze". She remains the only UK contender to ...

. Under an alter ego, "the Fury", Ria creates films of

training with the help of her older sister, Lena, who has dropped out of art school and moved back in with their loving but traditional parents, Fatima and Rafe, both of them discouraging Ria's dreams. At school, Ria is inseparable from her friends Clara and Alba, but their disapproving teacher urges her to pursue a more "serious" career. Ria's emails to Eunice about a potential mentorship go unanswered, and she is soundly defeated by the school bully Kovacs. The Khan family is invited to an Eid soirée by Raheela, the leader of Fatima's social circle of Pakistani mothers, at her lavish mansion. Ria realizes the party has been arranged to find a suitable match for Raheela's son Salim, a successful geneticist, but is unable to stop Lena from agreeing to a date. To Ria's horror, Lena is charmed by Salim and, after a few whirlwind weeks of dating, agrees to marry him and move to

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. Despite their parents' support, Ria's refusal to accept Lena's choices, including abandoning her art career, drives the sisters apart. Convinced there must be a more sinister explanation, Ria enlists Clara and Alba's help to spy on Salim. They concoct an elaborate plan to steal his laptop, and Ria distracts him while her friends hack his computer, but they find nothing incriminating. Desperate to sabotage Lena's relationship, Ria lashes out at her friends, and breaks into Salim's bedroom to plant used condoms. She is caught, and confronts Salim with a lovey-dovey picture showing him together with a pretty girl, whom he explains is his first wife who died in childbirth. Furious, Lena berates Ria, telling her to give up the fantasies that she will change her mind about the marriage or that Ria will ever become a stuntwoman. At odds with her sister and ignored by her friends, Ria gives up martial arts. She visits Raheela to apologize and is dragged into joining her spa day, where Raheela reveals her true colors and tortures Ria with waxing. Fighting off Raheela's staff, Ria stumbles into the mansion's secret lab and discovers that all the eligible women at the Eid party were secretly scanned and tested, and Lena was selected for her fertility and strong uterus. Escaping back home, Ria realizes she cannot convince her family of the truth. She tells Clara and Alba, and together they devise a plan, persuading Kovacs to drive them to the wedding to rescue Lena. Ria distracts the guests with a spectacular Filmi (Bollywood-style) dance ("Maar Dala") while Clara and Alba, disguised as waiters, sneak past the armed guard at Lena's door. They

chloroform Chloroform, or trichloromethane, is an organic compound with chemical formula, formula Carbon, CHydrogen, HChlorine, Cl3 and a common organic solvent. It is a colorless, strong-smelling, dense liquid produced on a large scale as a precursor to ...

Lena and hide her inside a tea trolley, but Raheela captures Ria, and reveals she and Salim plan to impregnate Lena with a clone of Raheela. Forced to return Lena, the friends are locked in the bridal suite as the wedding begins, but Kovacs comes to their rescue and subdues the guard. Taking his gun, Ria holds Raheela at gunpoint and exposes her plan, leading Lena to remember being drugged and tested by Salim, who admits that his first wife died carrying his mother’s clone. Raheela seizes the gun but is disarmed by Fatima, as Ria’s family and friends fight off the guests. Lena subdues Salim while Ria finally masters a reverse spinning kick to defeat Raheela, and the police arrive as the sisters drive off. Reconciling with Lena, Ria finally receives an encouraging email from Eunice, and the sisters celebrate together.

Cast

Production

In January 2022, it was revealed that director

was working on a feminist

action/

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

focussing on two privately educated British-Pakistani sisters in London. The film is by Working Title, Focus Features and Parkville Pictures, and has a tone and voice similar to Manzoor’s breakthrough and BAFTA, Peabody, and Rose d'Or award winning

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...

series ''

We Are Lady Parts ''We Are Lady Parts'' is a British television sitcom created, written, and directed by Nida Manzoor. The series follows an eponymous British punk rock band that consists entirely of Muslim women. After airing as a pilot on 21 December 2018 on ...

''. In February 2022 it was announced that filming had wrapped on the project in London. It is produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for

Working Title A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...

with Olivier Kaempfer and John Pocock for Parkville Pictures. Focus Features had distribution rights. The typography & graphic design for the title card, credits, chapter headings and fight sequence introductions was designed by Peter Anderson Studio.

Genre and influences

While the structure of ''Polite Society'' does not adhere to a specific genre throughout, Manzoor has described portions of it as "a joyful kung fu Bollywood epic." Mansoor also drew from spaghetti westerns, '' All About Eve,'' Hong Kong kung-fu films, and the work of Yuen Woo-ping. Additional influences include the 2002 version of '' Devdas'' (Ria's dances to ''Maar Dala'' at the wedding), the novels of

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

Jackie Chan Fang Shilong (born 7 April 1954), known professionally in English as Jackie Chan and in Chinese as Cheng Long ( zh, c=成龍, j=Sing4 Lung4; "becoming the dragon"), is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and stuntman known for ...

, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, ''

Get Out ''Get Out'' is a 2017 American psychological horror film written, co-produced, and directed by Jordan Peele in his directorial debut. It stars Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landr ...

'', ''

Kill Bill ''Kill Bill: Volume 1'' is a 2003 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, who swears revenge on a team of assassins (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) an ...

'' (

Quentin Tarantino Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...

), Mira Nair,

Deepa Mehta Deepa Mehta, (; born 1 January 1950) is an Indian-born Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996 film), ''Fire'' (1996), ''Earth (1998 film), Earth'' (1998), and ''Water (2005 film), Water'' (2005 ...

, and '' The Slums of Beverly Hills''.

Release

''Polite Society'' was released at the

on 21 January 2023, at the 2023

Glasgow Film Festival The Glasgow Film Festival is an annual film festival based in Glasgow, Scotland. The festival began in 2005. By 2015, the festival had seen audience figures top 40,000 for two consecutive years. 2008 2008's festival took place between 14–24 Feb ...

on 12 March 2023, and was released in the United Kingdom and the United States on 28 April 2023.

Reception

On the review aggregator

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 91% based on 158 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "''Polite Society'' throws, kicks, and punches the genre etiquette book out the window to deliver a fun film that blends Bollywood splendor and British wryness." 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 weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Critic response

Robbie Collin Robbie Collin is a British film critic. Collin studied aesthetics and the philosophy of film at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He edited the university's student newspaper, '' The Saint''. Collin has been the chief film critic at ''The D ...

in the ''

Daily Telegraph Daily or The Daily may refer to: Journalism * Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks * ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times'' * ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...

'' described it as “rollicking” and “crafty and fresh” and “all done with infectious pep”, with “the fights themselves – witty, lucid, crunchy, slick” and Kansara a “blatant star-in-the-making”. '' BBC Cultures Mohammad Zaheer gave it four stars and wrote that the film was "an action-packed, genre-blending delight that fires on all cylinders" and that " erything – from the writing to the cinematography, the performances, the choreography and the soundtrack – is on point, and it has all the requisite ingredients to be an exhilarating experience for audiences that come along for the ride." He also praised the lack of stereotypes regarding Lena's engagement to Salim. In ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Peter Bradshaw mentioned Manzoor as one of the best debut’s in film in 2023.

Accolades

Manzoor won in the Best Debut Screenwriter category at the 2023 British Independent Film Awards. Also nominated were Priya Kansara in the Breakthrough Performance category, Ritu Arya for Best Supporting Performance, Claire Carter for Best Hair & Make Up, and Paddy Eason for Best Effects.

References

External links

*
Polite Society
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Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...