Film review
Film review:
Bend it like Beckam
The story centers around Jess, an Indian girl who loves British soccer star David Beckham and Jules, an English girl who befriends Jess after she observes her running circles around a group of strapping young men playing soccer in the park.
Jess comes from a very strict Indian family where gender roles are clearly defined. Women are expected to learn to cook and care for their husbands, who are, of course, expected to be the sole breadwinners. This might be fine for Jess' older sister Pinky, however Jess has a dramatically different vision of her own future, and it doesn't entail settling down and cooking the perfect chapatti. Jess sees herself as a female version of her hero, David Beckham, competing in soccer rather than cooking for an acceptable Indian man as tradition dictates.
Jess secretly joins Jules' competitive women's soccer team, and is forced to lead a double life in order to not disappoint her parents and still play the sport for which she lives and breathes. Sneaking out to practices and traveling with the team to tournaments puts a strain on her home life. She must concoct outlandish lies to justify her absences from home. To complicate matters, she finds herself falling for her soccer coach, a guy who is off-limits for many reasons including the big one - he's not Indian According to director Gurinder Chadha, the actors in "Bend It Like Beckham" went through months of rigorous training to look like real soccer players. That training paid off as the soccer scenes are convincingly realistic. Parminder Nagra (Jess) and Keira Knightley (Jules) are simply terrific as the two young women yearning for the freedom to conquer the world of soccer. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers does a great job as the coach who unexpectedly gets caught up in a sticky love triangle. There's only one scene where Rhys-Meyers doesn't look the part, but fortunately it's near the end of the film and so won't distract audiences too