Art film stud Rahul Bose’ new wave film Everybody Says I’m Fine returns to Manhattan at the Pioneer Theater from Sep. 1-8. The film, a thriller in English about a mind-reading hairdresser in Bombay, stars Bose (Mr. and Mrs. Iyer) and British desi Koel Purie (American Daylight, Road to Ladakh). Upper Stall pointed out why the film is innovative, part of a flowering of increasingly sophisticated Indian cinema which includes Dil Chahta Hai and Yuva:
ESIF is most unlike any other commercially made English film in India… The film is not intended for an international (read festival) audience. It is for English speaking Indians… Bose is certainly not trying to sell India with a typical portrayal of a kind of Indianess from a Western perspective… There is no deliberate indulgence in trying to woo a “crossover audience” (whatever that is.) It’s a good story to tell. And Bose has just happened to do it in English.
As usual, the New York Times didn’t grok it.
I saw this at the 2003 Indian Film Festival in LA. I liked it so much I wanted to touch every girl’s hair to see if I could read their minds too. Suffice it to say I don’t recommend others get carried away like me.