Ken Loach Tackles Religion, Immigration in New Film
Friday February 13 11:59 AM ET

British director Ken Loach said on Friday he hoped his new film "Ae Fond Kiss" shed light on how religious pressures can hamper the assimilation of immigrants.

The film, which got a rousing reception at its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, is about the Muslim son of devout Pakistani immigrants in Scotland who falls in love with an Irish Catholic teacher.

Defying his family's plans for an arranged marriage with a cousin he has never met, the slick and successful Glasgow disc-jockey Casim moves in with the music teacher, causing her to lose her job at a Catholic secondary school.

The two try to ward off the family pressures and myriad prejudices but the inexorable clash of cultures and bigots lurking around the corner seemingly doom the couple's chances.

"We have to be much more critical of religion and especially fundamentalism," Loach said after basking in more applause at a news conference. "We have to challenge religious doctrine."

Loach said he wanted not only to expose the nefarious pressures immigrant families apply to their children but also the way the church also interferes in people's lives.

"The process of assimilation will happen," he said. "The stages along the road can be full of pain. We tried to show it from everyone's different perspective."

Screenplay-writer Paul Laverty, who borrowed the title from a Robert Burns film, said the idea for a film about intolerance came after some Americans were involved in wanton beatings of Muslims in the United States after the September 11 attacks.

"The way Muslims were demonized after September 11 just wouldn't leave my mind," he said.

The film's stars are Dublin-born actress Eva Birthistle and first-time actor Atta Yaqub, who puts in a superb performance with a genuine Glasgow accent.

They were all challenged by Loach's unusual style of directing -- he did not give actors the scripts for their scenes until just before the day's shooting and sometimes kept them in the dark on what would happen next until cameras rolled.

"It kept me on my toes," said Birthistle. "It's as close to real life as you can get, never knowing what's around the corner."

QUOTE

Screenplay-writer Paul Laverty, who borrowed the title from a Robert Burns film,

Robbie Burns made films. :?:

Haha, looking forward to the film version of "To A Louse." Or "The Fornicator."

Well it was my wife's birthday on Friday so I broke my 10 week film fast to take her out to the cinema (at her request), and this is what we saw.

As ever, it's nice to be the first here to see a film. I might try and get a review up or something.

I actually haven't seen much Ken Loach, but I have to say on the basis of this I like the way he makes films, but this one left me a bit annoyed, and Loach's comments in the article above, when compare to the film above just seem to be as bigoted as the stereotypical characters he brings us in the film. The acting and the feel of it is superb, but the screenplay was below par in my estimation. Too many cliche's. The opening is brilliant but it quickly comes down to things like that old romantic cliche of the secret that one party finds too difficult to share until its too late so the other person gets really upset.

Would be interested to see what SDG & Prins make of this when it comes out in the US.

Matt

I've seen it too,Matt.

I found it a bit hard to take(although I normally admire Loach),as I'd say that faith-communities don't come across well in the film.

(The story has some echoes in 'Witness',I reckon....)*

*This comment's a bit of a non-sequitur,as the Amish Church is much more attractive in one film than Glasgow Roman Catholicism or "Glasgow-Islam-by-way-of-Pakistan" is in the other.I was commenting more on the theme of "extra-religious sexual attraction and love"....

My wife summed it up best when she said that the film starts with a brilliant speech about how The Pope, George Bush and Henrik Larsson are all Christians but you don't ,lump them together but the west just lumps all muslims together as one stereotype. And then the film from then on basically plays the Islam stereotype which was interesting in East is East, but has just been done to death now, and post 9/11 I'm not sure how it really helps anything.

end spoilers


One thing I did find interesting was that the Priest was played by a real priest. What was he thinking of?

Matt

OK I finally got around to writing my review.

BTW Loach's last film was classified as an 18 over here for a rare use of the C word (not "crap"), and there was a lot of discussion over here as to whether that was too harsh - Loach claimed that the word was not as outrageous in the film's cultural context, an that objection to it was much ore of a class thing.

I seem to recollect that the same word gets used once in this film, but it scrapes through on a 15 - were the BBFC trying to avoid the controversy this time (or maybe I just imagined the word being used.

Matt

I watched East is East again on Friday and it only served to confirm my feeling that it is a better treatment of these issues that Loach's take. Somehow it finds more humanity in its traditionalist husband eventhough he's a worse father.

Matt

Saw it last week as one of the films in the Whitehead Film Festival. Got quite a bit of discussion. It should be noted that in the Burns poem which supplies the title, there isn't a happy ending. We shouldn't look at the two together at the end as a done deal - and certainly not forever.

Some of the other things we talked about in the jury - the complete lack of any community for Roisin as opposed to the (to our Western way of seeing it) near stiffling community/family relationship of Casim. We were a bit put out with the way the priest was drawn here. We thought the oral sex scene was a bit overdone. It's important to look at all three of the Pakistani siblings and the way each is reacting to the cultural clash they are in.

Stef,

I notice you've just seen this. Is it now on general release in the US. What did you make of it?

Matt

I took my small group -- my teen small group -- yes, I have both an adult small group and a teen small group -- to see Guess Who earlier in the week too, and they were close to the same film. I had one of those Peter T. Chattaway experiences where I was all, "Wait. Didn't I just see this somewhere else?" Sure enough, I had. Black vs. white relationships in the Bernie Mac/Ashton Kutcher film, Catholic vs. Muslim in the Loach, though Loach's humor is a little less of a put-on and a lot less insulting than the predictable Guess Who. But both films were quite standard in presenting the case for (love! amore!) and against (oh, but the family will never truly understand! They will probably disown me!) the relationship. Ugh. I thought these kinds of racial reconciliatory narrative plights were thrown out in the late 60s. The subject was too old-school for me to dig into either of these films.

Loach's is just a tad better in that it digs deeper into the Muslim family, showing how the love affair causes even more problems in an already intolerant and prejudiced family. But it really unwinds in one lame scene where the priest who I'm sure is in charge of all The Magdalene Sisters really lays into the female Catholic lead. Whoa, talk about spiritual abuse. I think he even said at one point something like, "I'm your priest and I will decide what is right and wrong for you," or some lame thing that was close to that.

There was romance in each of the two films I mentioned, there were little gestures of love and tenderness, and the Loach film held nothing back in showing how the bed would be effected by all the emotion. Overall though I wouldn't recommend either film because of predictability, because of old ground that has been covered before, because of more predictability, and then tensionless, undramatic resolutions of predictability in the end of each film.

But maybe I'm just being too nice about the whole thing.

-s.

[edited to spell "Kutcher" right, could've just spelled CUTE BOY LOSER ACTOR, hmm.]

[edited to say that yes, it is predictably available from Netflix.]

Watched this again last night. I really like the protrayal of the three sibs. They really represent, I think the ongoing acculturaization of immigrant community. The oldest has found an accomodation of her parents world and her new world. The youngest has some respect for the old, but is firmly established in the new (note that she has no Pakistani accent.) Casim is where the real struggle is taking place.

Other than the priest, there are no real villians here. The older sister is cruel to Roisin, but without malice, merely seeking to protect her family (and her life). The parents are stuck in the honor/shame culture. Eventually, Casim explains a bit of his father to Roisin, but even then, she can't see how strongly Casim is bound to them. Roisin's lack of roots (familial or religious, even being a temp teacher) leaves her very alone in the world. She has no safety net, which all the Khan family take for granted.

Oh well. Enough rehash.