Mira Nair’s “Namesake,” featuring Bollywood stars Tabu and Irfan Khan, was the opening night film of this year’s Cinequest Film Festival on Feb. 28 in San Jose.
This was no small feat, since Cinequest is one of the largest and most influential independent film festivals held in the Bay Area, and this year it showcased two South Asian films — “The Namesake” and “Outsourced.”
Based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Namesake” is a deeply intimate film about the immigrant experience and identity, the clash of cultures and the tangled ties between generations.
It is a tale of an immigrant couple, Ashoke (Irfaan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu), who relocate from Calcutta to New York to start a new life. Ashoke, an engineer by training, adapts far better to their new life than his wife, who resists American customs and pines for her family in Calcutta.
It is their son Gogol, named after the famous Russian author, who struggles the most to define himself and come to terms with his Bengali identity in an American landscape.
Director Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding,” “Salaam Bombay”) is no stranger to capturing cultural details, and her deeply observant and intimate style is both melancholic and reflective. Nair’s storytelling is ably supported by beautiful cinematography and keen production design.
The casting is superb: Khan and Tabu make an appealing couple whose deep but gentle love for each other is touching. Kal Penn (“Harold and Kumar go to White Castle”) as Gogol performs with great sensitivity and confidence.
Company man goes to India
Meanwhile, “Outsourced,” a comedy by director John Jeffcoat, will be screened this Saturday, March 3 at Cinequest.This is a fish-out-of-water story about a company man who, after learning that his entire department is being outsourced, agrees to travel to India to train his replacement.
Todd (Josh Hamilton) heads the sales department of a company that sells cheap novelty products. When he learns of his department’s outsourcing, his only option is to agree to the long journey.
Alone in a foreign land, poor Todd is met with a group of young Indian workers mystified as to why anyone would want the useless products his company sells. Rescue comes in the form of the beautiful Asha (Ayesha Dharker), who quickly assumes the role of showing Todd that he must understand the people and their culture before he can inspire them.
BOX:
Namesake
122 minutes; English, Bengali and Hindi with English subtitles
Opens in theaters March 9
Outsourced
98 minutes; English
March 3 at the Cinequest Film Festival
Visit www.cinequest.org for more information
