SummaryDeepa Mehta's tender, passionate and controversial love story of two Indian women torn between their devotion to duty and their desire for love and companionship. (Zeitgeist Films)
SummaryDeepa Mehta's tender, passionate and controversial love story of two Indian women torn between their devotion to duty and their desire for love and companionship. (Zeitgeist Films)
Mehta has created a pair of memorable characters who are easy to empathize with, and who gratifyingly are never transformed from flesh-and-blood individuals into mere symbols.
Writer-director Deepa Mehta fuses the soap-opera elements of her plot -- which reveals one sexual secret after another of the variously betrayed, selfish, and self-actualizing members of the two couples' New Delhi household--into profound drama.
As a director, Mehta would do well to stop smothering her empathy in glibness (she uses the family's ancient mute grandmother as a sitcom prank), but her empathy pokes through nonetheless.
Fire is designed to provoke questions and spark debate. Mission accomplished, but, despite a heartfelt tone that pervades its every moment, it doesn't do much else.
The third feature from this Indian-born writer-director... is an underwhelming effort that adds little new to the debate over arranged marriages and fails to ignite much interest in the problems faced by two frustrated New Delhi wives.