Nida Manzoor, taking bites of a sugar-dusted cookie in a swanky Soho hotel, politely fudges the F-word. The only time she goes the full F-U-C-K is when scolding herself for being a South Asian good-girl. She’s living the social tension around pleasing others that’s escalated to bizarre proportions in her debut feature comedy, Polite Society. “Biscuits are nice!” is how Ria (Priya Kansara), the heroine, dismisses Saleem, the “nice”, “hotter than God” geneticist-doctor with dastardly nuptial plans on Lena (Ritu Arya), her sister. Niceness, in Polite Society, is evil.
Fortunately, life doesn’t always imitate art, because Manzoor, clean-faced but for winged black eyeliner, is adorable. The sisterly naughtiness of her smash-hit series We Are Lady Parts is in evidence, as we bond over trashy films and a desire to see menstrual blood on screen – Manzoor punctuating her enthusiasm with kittenish growls (“Ugh, the period scene in Souvenir II, is it everything?”) and dainty thwacks of the table.
As with , the ironic period drama that’s as addictive as a box of macaroons, Manzoor’s inveterate good manners enables her to put a zippy spin on generational repressions. You can see why attempts to write working class stereotypes for collapsed beneath flights of silliness, and why her erupt with woman-on-woman cartoonish violence. Its gonzo, bathetic energy is offset by the toxic femininity of its queen bee, Raheela (Nimra Bucha), in her coiffed-to-a-scythe’s-edge mane of curls, who is forced to live through her Oedipal son.
