Mississippi Masala

Starring: Denzel Washington

Directed by: Mira Nair

RS: Not Rated

1991 Romance

Indian director Mira Nair follows up her stunning first feature, Salaam Bombay!, with a powerfully affecting film about an interracial affair. The script, by Bombay's Sooni Taraporevala, unites Demetrius (Denzel Washington), a black carpet cleaner in Greenwood, Mississippi, with Mina (Sarita Choudhury), a young Indian woman whose family moved from Uganda to Greenwood when Idi Amin expelled all Asians in 1972. Mina has never lived in India, and Demetrius has never seen Africa. They are spiritual exiles, but they connect with each other.

Masala is an Indian seasoning made of different-colored spices, an apt metaphor for Nair's erotic, funny and painful romance. Washington and newcomer Choudhury are vibrantly expressive as the color-crossed lovers driven apart by racial tensions. Mina's family, including her lawyer father, Jay (Roshan Seth), and her mother, Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore, who has appeared in several Satyajit Ray classics), believe in a hierarchy of color -- the fairer the better. Demetrius's friends also disapprove when his passion for Mina costs him jobs at the many motels run by Indian families (Mina's included). Nair explores margins of the South ignored by most filmmakers. Instead of making a big statement, she offers an intimately involving look at a clash of two cultures that are blind to what unites them.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 624