East Is East

In focusing on the experiences and conflicting hopes of Asians living in the north of England, Ayub Khan-Din's serio-comic script bears some resemblance to My Son the Fanatic. Set in Salford in 1971, it tells of a family mustering forces to rebel against their sternly patriarchal father and his insistence they submit to traditional arranged marriages. While some of the humour is considerably broader than that in the Kureishi adaptation, and while director O'Donnell never matches the tenderness Prayad brought to the scenes between Puri and Rachel Griffiths, this is a very decent debut indeed, full of neat insights into '70s Britain, endowed with engagingly profane dialogue, and blessed with another terrific turn from Puri.