Mississippi Masala (1991): cross-culture romance with a young Denzel Washington (Review)

Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, released on Blu-Ray by Criterion UK, is a nice film. Befuddlingly so, in fact. Nair’s only prior feature was Salaam Bombay! in 1988, a story of Indian street children gritty enough to have critics hailing her as the heir to Vittorio de Sica. Her second film was inspired by Romeo & Juliet, but even before you get to the end of Mississippi Masala you know it’s not going to be a tragedy. The film is a pleasure, sensitive and sensual, shot in a warm blanket of summertime colours by the genius that is Ed Lachman (True Stories, Carol). Yet it begins with a fifteen-minute prologue set in Idi Amin’s Uganda, and it is, ultimately, about racism.

The most obvious thing that prevents Mississippi Masala from being a downer is the heat and charm generated by its central couple Mina and Demetrius, played by Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington. For Choudhury – now a reliable player in films ranging from The Hunger Games to The Green Knight – it was her first film, and some of the big confrontations later on in the film maybe betray a little inexperience. Yet she also has a raw, youthful energy that can’t be faked, channelling her own determination to make the most of this big break into the clenched-jaw defiance Mina faces the world with. Washington… well, he was early career too, except he’d already won an Oscar for Glory. Mississippi Masala is, essentially, the last appearance of Supporting Actor Denzel, before next year’s Malcolm X made it clear no-one would be asking him to play the sidekick again. That actually makes the film a little richer looking back: you’re impressed that someone who has movie-star written all over him is also comfortable allowing the film to remain Mina’s story. Washington and Choudhury are both ridiculously attractive, but it’s their actorly charisma and intensity that makes their phone sex (something which would go on to be a ’90s trope in everything from The Truth About Cats & Dogs to the Clinton impeachment) as hot as their actual sex.

The other thing that makes Mississippi Masala surprisingly warm-hearted for a film about racism is this: it’s not about the white characters. Mina and her family were driven out of Uganda by Amin’s real-life purge of Ugandan Asians; the proudly African-American identity of Demetrius and his family brings up traumatic memories for them. They react to Demetrius’s romance with Mina with newly unleashed intolerance, but the Black characters aren’t above similar sentiments, wondering why “their” women aren’t good enough for Demetrius. Both sets of characters have experienced prejudice (there’s a bleak early scene of two white women enthusiastically noting that Demetrius’s father is One Of The Good Ones), but both are capable of expressing prejudice too. It’s this embrace of complexity, this refusal to make either side into cardboard villains, that keeps you on the movie’s side. When a film is this mature and humane, you feel reassured it’ll end on a forgiving note.

Admittedly there are parts of the film that have dated. The conservative Asian parents complaining about their kids seeing people they hadn’t approved of would become an over-familiar plot ingredient in film, TV and literature over the next decade – Nair herself would subvert it with the happy arranged marriage in her greatest film, 2001’s Monsoon Wedding. The depiction of American culture can tend towards stereotypes too; there is one minor white character called Bubba. But part of the film’s tonal balance involves using broader, more mainstream, comedic elements to throw the painful, knotty stuff at the film’s heart into sharper relief. There is something delightful about Nair’s decision to sweeten the plot beat of Mina and Demetrius being ostracised by their community with a good old rom-com montage of people gossiping about them – and, as if to underline that the director isn’t looking down on her characters, she plays one of the gossips herself.

When Nair’s good, she’s as good as anyone. When she’s not quite on her game, her films are still worthy of more consideration than the frequently ignorant dismissals they get. (She reteamed, for instance, with Choudhury on 1996’s Kama Sutra, a perfectly solid period drama whose subject matter and title basically painted a huge target on its backs for bone-idle hacks) For all Mississippi Masala isn’t one of her first-rank films, it’s encouraging to see it get the Criterion treatment, cementing her place as one of the great humanists of modern cinema. This Region 2 disc is based on a Region 1 disc that came out this May, so all the extras are as fresh as the film: choice picks include Nair’s commentary, interviews with Lachman and Choudhury, and more.

Mississippi Masala (1991) and Graham’s archive