Ever since we returned to Elsewhere, Rocky has been pestering me to allow him to write movie reviews for this column. “I saw sooo many films!” he says, referring to the seat-back entertainment on our recent Emirates flight. “Okay!” I tell him. “Go ahead. Just remember, you’ve only got 500 words to work with.” He rolls his beady black eyes heavenwards and sighs loudly, but gets down to work at once.
The Breadwinner : This is an AMAZING film. But sad, you know? Set in some place called Afghanistan. The men all have hairy faces and the ladies look sad all the time. Even though they’re very pretty. The story’s told in pictures, which move in a sort of jumpy way, but you get used to it. It’s called animation. There’s a little girl whose father’s taken off to jail so she’s got to sell stuff on the street, to make money for the family. But girls aren’t allowed to work in that country. So she dresses like a boy. Anyway. It’s beautiful in a strange way and I cried a lot. Definitely go see it.
The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir: This was my total favourite. A little boy lives in a Bombay slum with his very beautiful, hard-working mother. Suddenly she gets sick and dies. The boy grows up, becomes a trickster-magician and flies to France! He wears horribly colourful clothes and plays tricks on people, but his smile is sweet. He has many adventures before coming back to Bombay. It’s a completely crazy story, but I loved it. The actor’s name is Dhanush. Never seen him before, but he’s brilliant. Forget the other films. Just see this one. Trust me. You’ll thank me.
Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column