So rude of me last night to say that I had been to the cinema without mentioning which film I'd seen. So time to correct that anomaly now - the moving picture concerned was Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding which won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival. It was showing at the Shrewsbury Music Hall in an auditorium apparently chockful of teachers given the audible tuts as I trudged in with Michele wearing my Lambretta trackie top and Puma Easy Riders. Somebody really should have warned me it was formal dress only.

Anyway, the film was delightful, with all the colour, romance, song and dance of yer traditional Bollywood movie, but acted and directed by people who have clearly been influenced by the semi-improvised ensemble pieces of Robert Altman and Dogme films such as Festen. The film centres on the preparations of a middle-class Punjabi family for the arranged wedding of their daughter to an engineer living in America. The usual generational and cultural conflicts, revelations of family secrets, comic mishaps and romantic complications ensue, but the setting and the screenplay manage to avoid the usual cliches and pitfalls, and the energy, vibrancy and warmth of the performances in addition to the usual charms of the Bollywood genre supplied the necessary magic to spring the formula to funky life.

Related links:

Derek Malcolm's Guardian review of Monsoon Wedding from last year's London Film Festival.

Download a Monsoon Wedding screensaver (for PC only)

Profiles of the superb (but mostly unknown in the UK) cast of Monsoon Wedding.

Excellent viewer's guide to Monsoon Wedding includes some background info on the excellent soundtrack.

In fact, I enjoyed the film almost enough to decide to get married. This didn't last long though, which is just as well as it would have made the journey home a bit uncomfortable.