I've seen Despite the Falling Snow, which was okay, but I could not expect anything from the same director to be this bad.
No, really. Every cliché in the book.
People talking religion the first time they meet. A family forcing their daughter to marry a cokehead because he's from a good family. A mother telling her daughter "Why don't you make an Indian salad instead of a Greek salad? Why are you so ashamed of your own culture?" What the hell is that? Then there's another scene where the daughter buys Ethiopian bread, but the racist Indian mum says "We have Indian bread! This is Sparta! Tonight we dine in hell!" The last part is fake, but you get the point. The film shows Indians to be cultural supremacists, refusing to allow carbs from Ethiopia into their household. The mum insists that Ethiopians don't have bread, because they're starving in Ethiopia. Hate to break it to you, grandma, but people are starving in India too, as well as the UK, Kuwait, Mexico and New Zealand. They all have bread though.
Then the mum goes full racist, throwing a tantrum and screaming "Come and take this horrible bread and send it to Africa where it belongs."
I'm not denying that some Indians are racist, but if you have a racist mum who is racist about bread, the issue would come up way before you're in your mid- twenties and are weeks away from getting married. Usually this issue comes up the first time she sees you eating a pretzel or a bagel at 12. Not sudden mid-life anti-carb racism.
It just keeps going. Ridiculous wedding music. A man telling a woman to "cover her shoulders" - she's wearing a shoulderless dress. You saw her buy it, take it out, wear it. It's too late for shoulders now, mate. So he gives her some random scarf to wear. That makes no sense. He would've surely objected the moment he saw the dress, not 1 minute before the engagement party.
But we have men telling women they're indecent, and that's what counts. The father talks about the 6-Day War with Israel at the engagement party, because that's what Middle Easterners do all the time according to this director. Then it goes to Israel.
A scene where a servant spits in a coffee that she serves to the lady of the house, and she keeps trying to give it to the lady, who, just before taking a sip, asks a question about a cake, a dress, etc. This is repeated several times. This is not good enough for something like Friends, much less a film. You thought that was boring? It is repeated again with a glass of water less than 8 minutes later.
Someone says "She's had 4 fiances, you know" showing 4 fingers at the same time in case we don't understand.
Then the Muslim woman asks if her Arab friend will get married in a mosque. You can't get married in a mosque. It's a temple. Buddhists don't get married in a Buddhist temple. Then she's corrected "not all Arabs a Muslim" (this family is Christian), but then says "We're getting married in a Church." !! Arab Christians don't get married in church either, honey. Churches in the ME are temples - there's no bingo night or any of that stuff.
You can assume that someone unaware of Islamic culture could ask if someone would get married in a mosque, but in this film, the only ignorant person is the director. The person asking "Will you get married in a mosque?" is a Muslim herself, showing complete ignorance of her own religion.
Indians, Arabs, everyone speaks English at home because subtitles are too complicated for Sarif's target audience who want to look at pretty girls.
There's erotica, dancing, lesbians in bed, etc. Feminine-looking lesbians, if you were wondering.
Calling this a TV-film would be a compliment. It's more of an 80-minute soap.
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