AMU, the ambitious debut feature by Shonali Bose, wears its political heart on its sleeve and is unafraid to tackle big topics: identity, history, truth, injustice.
The film, which begins as a gentle comedy of clashing cultures, follows Kaju Roy (Konkona Sensharma), an Indian-American visiting relatives in Delhi. Searching for what she calls "the real India," Kaju, orphaned at 3, is searching for herself and, soon, interrogating the past. And a bloody past it is.
Ms. Bose's real concern here is the riots that broke out in 1984 after India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikh men and boys in Delhi were murdered, and as Kaju learns, families were dispersed, and justice has been delayed and denied.
"Amu" wants to do many things at once: to find the personal in the political, to meld the two and to indict the Indian government. Ms. Bose, who also wrote the screenplay, isn't yet a skilled enough filmmaker to weave these threads together seamlessly.
Still, this movie has moments of considerable charm (Kaju and her cousin explaining some facts of modern life to their grandmother; a boy dancing to a Bollywood song until the electricity goes off) and of real power (the riot sequences, seen from a child's perspective
Produced, written (in English, Bengali, Hindi and Punjabi, with English subtitles) and directed by Shonali Bose; director of photography, Lourdes Ambrose; edited by Bob Brooks; music by Nandlal Nayak; production designer, Ayesha Punvani; released by Emerging Pictures. Running time: 102 minutes. This film is not rated.
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