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Monsoon Wedding
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'Monsoon Wedding'

An exuberant family drama set in Mira Nair's beloved Punjabi culture, where ancient tradition and dot-com modernity combine in unique and perfect harmony as the romantic monsoon rains loom, the extended Verma family reunites from around the globe for a last-minute arranged marriage in New Delhi.

Monsoon Wedding traces five intersecting stories, each navigating different aspects of love as they cross boundaries of class, continent and morality. The film celebrates a contemporary India never before seen on screen.

Mira Nair and the writer, Sabrina Dhawan, interweave the ancient and the modern, the old-fashioned and the irreverent, the innocent and the sexual in today's globalized Delhi. The intimate, handheld camera welcomes the viewer into the characters' lives and into Nair's own beloved Punjabi culture - robust, earthy and full of life. The audience is swept into the bacchanalian revelry of kebabs, whisky and Bollywood music that is a Punjabi wedding.

The family's hopes, anxieties and long-guarded secrets emerge amid frantic wedding preparations, and are juxtaposed with arresting montages of real-life Delhi. The relentless summer heat mirrors the story's building intensity as the city anticipates the cooling torrent of the monsoons. And when the rain comes, the cathartic downpour brings romance, revelation and liberation.

The father of the bride, LALIT VERMA (50), and his wife PIMMI (45), have endured the ups and downs of a fairly traditional marriage for years. As their daughter prepares to marry and leave home, they reach out to each other once again, finding deep comfort in the history they have shared.

The bride, ADITI (24), on the rebound from an aborted love affair with her former boss, VIKRAM (42), agrees to marry HEMANT (32), an engineer from Houston. Suddenly apprehensive about becoming a housewife in Texas, Aditi re-visits her lover the day before the wedding, throwing her future into turmoil.

P.K. DUBEY (25) is the upwardly mobile Tent and Catering contractor for the elaborate wedding celebrations. A cellphone-wielding wheeler-dealer, he is a member of India's emerging urban middle class. Dubey's tough pragmatism is outdone by the innocence and virtue of the family's maid, ALICE (20). He accidentally spies on Alice as she secretly dresses in the ornaments of her mistress and finds himself falling hopelessly in love with her. Theirs is the only pure and completely unexpected love story in the film, echoed by their bizarre shared habit of eating the core of marigolds - the Indian wedding flower.

RIA (28) is the unmarried writer cousin of the bride. As she watches Aditi plunge recklessly into marriage, Ria begins to assert herself to her family, defying convention and revealing a disturbing secret she has suppressed for years.

A story of steamy unconsummated teenage lust. AYESHA (17), another cousin of the bride, is a sexy Delhi 'babe' who meets RAHUL (19), a sophomore at the University of Sydney returning to India after five years. Surprised by Ayesha's boldness, Rahul becomes infatuated with this brazen young Indian woman who challenges all his assumptions about contemporary Indian culture.

This film is a love song to the city of Delhi and a portrait of modern, cosmopolitan India. Two-thirds of Monsoon Wedding was shot in an affluent farm-house on the city's outskirts, the rest in locations in both the old and new cities: the exteriors of old Mughal Delhi and the gaudy charm of the wedding sari-shops of Karol Bagh juxtaposed with the chic ateliers of the city's established designer culture and its posh corporate world. The filmmakers use the mobility and economy of a hand-held camera, capturing subtle, expressive performances from a huge ensemble cast. The cast is made up of acclaimed Indian movie stars, highly trained theatre actors from The National School of Drama, and lesser known television actors and first-timers.

The principal cast includes Naseeruddin Shah, Shefali Shetty, Vijay Raaz, Roshan Seth, Lillete Dubey, Vasundhara Das, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rajat Kapoor and Tilotama Shome. The film is filled with music, including ghazals (traditional love songs), modern Indian pop, jazz and bhangra (Punjabi folk/pop) music, all of which help to capture the varied and joyful sounds of a Punjabi wedding.

The music and dance of old and new-style Bollywood is a constant presence in Indian life. Monsoon Wedding echoes this Bollywood spirit with its vibrant score and with Ayesha's climactic dance number the night before the wedding. Monsoon Wedding is a celebration of the sensual pleasures of cinema, of love at any age-anytime, and of the importance of family. It also pays affectionate tribute to a city where weighty tradition collides daily with global culture and the dot-com age, yielding an unusual and melodious harmony.

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