Basmati Brie.

Film The other day I renewed my NOWtv Sky Cinema package because (a) there was a three months for ten pounds offer which is extremely cheap (b) the whole thing will be owned by someone other than Murdoch in the next couple of months anyway and (c) it meant I could finally watch Bismati Blues, the Brie Larson starring romcom which managed to dodge both a theatrical and home release in the UK despite having an oscar winning star.

You might remember the trailer from last year.  It's the one which looked like a right up dated white saviour film in which Brie Larson seems to pop up in India to fight for the local "peasants" against an evil conglomerate surrounded by stereotypes and racist portrayals.  It was suggested by some that it had been dredged up from Larson's past, an early film made before her career properly coagulated as a cash grab from a production company which was trying to cash in on some old turkey.

Except, as this very good interview with the filmmakers from Vulture explains although you could argue about how successfully India is portrayed in the film (this Hindustan Times review is scathing) Brie participation is rather more complex.  Unlike this Variety review which suggests she began shooting before Short Term 12 put her on the map, Larson had actually completed shooting on that before she joined Basmati Blues (with shooting taking place during the gap before ST12 was released properly at cinemas).

But that's when it gets interesting.  That initial shoot was a washout: monsoon season descended destroying sets and leading to cast and crew being evacuated.  Not enough footage was shot and when what they'd manage to record had been assembled it was far from a completed film.  But they'd run out of money, despite the whole thing being bank rolled by George Soros's nephew.  Seriously, the films weird, but the production process is somehow weirder.

So they bided their time and eventually having added some SFX to what they had, they convinced the financiers to give them some more money to go in an shoot enough material to complete the footage:

"By the time reshoots began in 2015, nearly all of the crewmembers, Indian and American, returned. Larson did too, even though by this point she had already shot Room, the movie that would win her the Oscar, and there was nothing in her contract that said she had to come back. Had the actress wanted Basmati Blues to stay hidden forever, she could have easily let it. That she didn’t is perhaps proof she really did care about the movie’s message."

So yes, contrary to every review you've probably seen, Larson cared about this project enough that she returned to complete reshoots after Room (which also makes me wonder exactly which footage is from which shooting period).  Which just goes to show that with filmmaking assuming a thing does not necessarily mean its true and some film reviewers need to do more research.   No one knows anything.

But what of the film?  It's bonkers.  Going in, I had no idea it was a musical (the trailer's a bit vague on that point) so imagine my delight when Brie began singing in the opening the scene and I remained gobsmacked for the rest of the duration.  It's rubbish, of course, and the charges of racist stereotyping aren't entirely wrong headed, it does have a shout out to Gurinder Chadha at one point).

Mostly because of Larson, you do end up just going with it in the end.  Any film which drops in a Busby Berkley inspired number starring Donald Sutherland and Tyne Daley has to at least be hate watched.  It also has Scott Bakula who eventually leads a giant song and dance number, a section which I'm guess has to have been shot in 2015 while is was on a break from one of those acronym shows.

Despite what the trailer suggests, it's almost the exact opposite of a white saviour film. She's in India to destroy the welfare of the local rice farming community on behalf of a multinational conglomerate by selling them sterile seeds.  As the filmmakers themselves admit, they were naive when writing the ending (most of which is in the trailer) but it is ultimate the Indian characters who save themselves and anything she does is by way of correcting her own horrendous mistake.

Overall it's worth seeing for Brie who belts out what are pretty good old school tunes (I've been listening to the soundtrack a lot since) even if the book doesn't quite hold together.  Larson's next seen in her directorial debut, Unicorn Store, which emerges in the UK at the end of this month and then it's Captain Marvel next year.  Hopefully playing a superhero doesn't mean she's completely given up on weirdy indie projects completely.