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INTERRACIAL ROMANCE: MISSISSIPPI MASALA, ZEBRAHEAD

© Sean Gallagher

There's no denying African-Americans have made considerable strides in movies, but there's also denying there's still a long way to go. One sign of this is how few interracial romances are allowed in movies. When you hear the blather about how Hollywood is "liberal," it would be good to remind people of that fact. When interracial romances are portrayed, only rarely do you get to see them done as a more conventional romantic story would be done. The only exception in 1992 was THE BODYGUARD, though again, it would have been more encouraging if it had been a better movie. LOVE FIELD had an interracial romance at its center, but like so many others, it softened it up, as if to say, "Well, we're in favor of this, but we're afraid to really stand for it." Two more interesting films about interracial romance were Mira Nair's MISSISSIPPI MASALA and Anthony Drazan's ZEBRAHEAD.

MISSISSIPPI MASALA was the English-language debut of Nair, best known for directing the Oscar-nominated foreign film SALAAM BOMBAY (1988). Of course, when a foreign director crosses over to Hollywood, there's a justifiable worry about whether they can stay true to themselves and still work in the U.S. Happily, that's the case here for Nair, as she delivers a rich and complex work.

The race war here is not black and white, but black and Indian, as we see in the opening, when in 1972 Uganda, Jay (Roshan Seth), a lawyer, and his family are kicked out of the country during the rise of Idi Amin, who wanted "Africa for the Africans." To Jay, who has considered Uganda his home, this is an outrage, especially since it was his best friend who kicked him out (even though his friend did arrange to get him out of jail, where he landed after an interview with the BBC). Now, almost 20 years later, Jay and his wife Kinnu (Sharmila Targore) run a motel, along with their daughter Mina (Sarita Choudhury). One day, Mina is out driving when she runs her car into the van of Demetrius (Denzel Washington), who runs a cleaning business cleaning motels like the one Jay owns. Naturally, both sides want a quick and peaceful solution. Out of this, Demetrius and Mina start to see a little more of each other. Their motives at first aren't entirely pure for this; in addition to the car accident hanging over their heads, Mina has always wondered about her home, which she has hazy memories of, and her father never talks about (even though he constantly applies for reinstatement), while Demetrius has an ex-girlfriend, Alicia (Natalie Oliver), he wants to make jealous. Soon, however, they fall in love, and naturally, there's resentment on both sides of the families.