Nina's Heavenly Delights Review

"Nina's Heavenly Delights" reviews

Movie

Nina's Heavenly Delights

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-09-22 15:55:13

Provider

Review

Nina's Heavenly Delights joins a lengthening list of light romantic films set among a British Asian community. The only major difference here is the location, with northern England traded for Glasgow, though it's a middle-class corner of the city where the family of a restauranteur have gathered for his funeral.

Typically all of them have some romantic baggage, including his widow, who has fallen for her dead husband's business partner. The central character, however, is Nina (Shelley Conn), who ran away to London to escape an arranged marriage and has returned only to pay her respects before making it clear she regards the family as being no more than an appendage to her life.

Things don't run so smoothly, however, when it transpires the recently deceased had gambled away half the business and the new partners want to close it. At the heart of the story is the conflict between the old traditions of the close-knit family and the younger generation's immersion in the ways of their homeland. So the youngest daughter is secretly in love with Scottish dancing while another has already had a clandestine marriage. But when Nina, in the amidst of trying to reclaim the family honour by winning the local Indian cookery competition, falls for the daughter of their late father's business partner, the walls each family member has erected to guard their privacy come tumbling down.

Though Nina's Heavenly Delights is clearly heartfelt, the film is a tad light and undemanding and a bit too predictable. Jokes fall flat and the sequences in which Nina's dead father re-appears in her dreams are less than inspired. Some will find the issues raised interesting particularly as it's set in a part of Britain whose Asian communities are not so high profile although it's essentially soft-centred and whimsical.