At 90 minutes, East is East doesn't outstay it's welcome. The film won the 1999 BAFTA for Best British Film and began life as a play at London's Royal Court two years earlier. It's a comedy drama set in Salford in the very grim North of England 1971. And if you're in a working class Anglo-Pakistani household it's doubly so. The Khans live in a back-to-back terrace house with an outdoor toilet (the production design here is terrific, it really does make the past a foreign country)and run the family chip shop.
The film recalls another English movie from 1969 called 'Spring and Port Wine' - the northern working class family, the children wanting to break away from the grip of a tyrannical father. The father is George, played splendidly by Om Puri, the Pakistani father of a family who he doesn't realise are English: they're sausage and bacon eating English, with sons who booze and go to discos and one of whom has a white girlfriend and responds to the prospect of an arranged marriage with "I'm not marrying a f**king Paki".
The whole cast is excellent - especially Archie Punjabi and Jimi Mistry - with Linda Bassett quite outstanding as Ella, George's English wife. She looks as if she's had 7 children. She's beaten up by George at one point, but remains devoted to her family throughout. She's a gem.
The film recalls another English movie from 1969 called 'Spring and Port Wine' - the northern working class family, the children wanting to break away from the grip of a tyrannical father. The father is George, played splendidly by Om Puri, the Pakistani father of a family who he doesn't realise are English: they're sausage and bacon eating English, with sons who booze and go to discos and one of whom has a white girlfriend and responds to the prospect of an arranged marriage with "I'm not marrying a f**king Paki".
The whole cast is excellent - especially Archie Punjabi and Jimi Mistry - with Linda Bassett quite outstanding as Ella, George's English wife. She looks as if she's had 7 children. She's beaten up by George at one point, but remains devoted to her family throughout. She's a gem.