Mississippi Masala Details

Tale of how prejudice makes victims and instigators of us all

Nair's ambitious film examines a burdensome plurality of subjects associated with race and migration within the confines of a more-or-less conventional love story. Four-year-old Mina, her lawyer father and family, of Indian origin, are among those expelled from Uganda in 1972. Eighteen years later, we find them in Greenwood, Mississippi. Mina (Choudhury) has become, unlike her father (Seth), acclimatised if not entirely assimilated to her new country, and is employed as a cleaner at the local motel, hopeful but not impatient for greater things. She meets Afro-American Demetrius (Washington), a clean-cut, self-employed contract carpet cleaner, and their relationship unleashes the submerged rivalries, resentments and prejudices of their respective communities. An interesting if poorly constructed and self-contradicting drama, directed with something less than assurance, but given some appeal by the honesty of its performances.