Monsoon Wedding

Monsoon Wedding can be seen as a counterpart to "The Celebration" - only with the signs reversed. Like Thomas Vinterberg's film, Monsoon Wedding takes place during a large family celebration , and it too contains a story of incest, but unlike the depressing Danish Dogme drama, this film is marked by joie de vivre and optimism.

The action unfolds over just a few days leading up to and during a wedding in an upper-middle-class Indian family. Lalit Verma and his wife Pimmi are preparing their daughter Aditi's wedding to Hemant, an engineer living in Houston. The marriage has been arranged with the consent of both future spouses. In fact Aditi has just ended a secret affair with a well-known TV presenter because he cannot bring himself to divorce his wife. Aditi wants a clean slate, so she is considering telling her husband-to-be about her affair, but is that really a good idea?

As in Robert Altman's ensemble films, not least "Gosford Park", you need to keep your wits about you if you are to keep track of the many characters and their relationships with one another.

Monsoon Wedding is a colourful tribute to the family and to love, which strikes high and low alike. An important sub-theme is the clash between old traditions and modern life.