Michael Smith Smith - 1 -
English Composition 1
Laura Kalinosky
May 17, 2002
Bend It Like Bhamra Bend It Like Beckham is a movie that is both entertaining and characteristically insightful. In this movie you are introduced to many characters which display many similar traits but also many different traits. The characters that showed the most interesting traits were Jesminder or Jess and her mother, Mrs. Bhamra. From their first scene to their last, the audience was always seeing a great diversity between the two.
Fairly early in the movie you are introduced to the Bhamra family. A family who is struggling in adhering to old world traditions and trying to raise two coming of age daughters. The setting alone is based on conflict and compromise.
Enter Jesminder Bhamra. A brilliantly gifted soccer player who is more at home on the field than in her actual home. Her tremendous soccer skills do little to win her parents support. Her constant struggles with her mother keep her from being able to be herself. Jess is forced to lie to her parents so that she is able to live her dream and play soccer. She cannot express her true feelings because her mother would not have it. Jess is focused, determined and strong willed, just like her mother.
Her mother says “Indian girls aren’t supposed to play football”, this is an insight towards Jess’s mothers stance on women’s role in society. Mrs. Bhamra is very much living in a traditional reality. She feels that Jess’s choices to play soccer are immature and the time for games is over. Jess’s focus should be on settling down and finding a good Indian boy to marry,
