July 5, 1999
Web posted at: 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- On the surface, Udayan Prasad's new film, "My Son the Fanatic," is a touching, often potent character study of a man who feels his world being trampled by the religious convictions of his son. But there's much more to it than that.

It's scripted by Hanif Kureishi, whose slight but witty screenplay for "My Beautiful Launderette" was nominated for an Oscar in 1987. The story of "My Son the Fanatic" delves into the vagaries of self-image while purposefully twisting Hollywood's more obvious approach to father-son conflicts. It's a wonderful little movie, in turns hilarious and bittersweet. It's also the most consistently powerful piece of filmmaking to be released so far this year.

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Watch a clip from "My Son the Fanatic" 2Mb QuickTime movie

Om Puri is a popular Indian actor who may be familiar to American audiences for his work in the crummy 1992 Patrick Swayze vehicle "City of Joy." Here, he plays a weather-beaten Pakistani cab driver named Parvez who drives long, monotonous shifts on the streets of North London.

Parvez is a rather hopeful man with a hidden wellspring of passion that doesn't play very well around his unhappy home. His wife, Minoo (Gopi Desai), belittles him at nearly every turn, complaining that they have no money and implying that his cabby career solidifies his standing as an abject failure. Their collegian son, Farid (Akbar Kurtha), has never been a big fan of his dad, and he raises a flag of utter disdain when he turns his back on Parvez and joins a fundamentalist Muslim sect.

Parvez drowns his many sorrows in his basement, through the careful application of whiskey and classic Louis Armstrong records. (His wife doesn't like the records because they're "too trumpet-y.")

One day, Parvez picks up a German businessman at the airport, a character played by the always-effective Stellan Skarsgård. This businessman is looking for some female companionship, and Parvez suggests one of his regular fares -- a gentle hooker named Bettina (Rachel Griffiths of 1998's "Hilary and Jackie").

Parvez has an ongoing flirtation with Bettina, but he would never, ever touch her. One of the secrets he wisely keeps from his family is that he shows honest compassion for the many street-walkers on his beat. He serves as a weak guardian angel of sorts when clients get out of hand, and never admits to himself that he badly needs the women's chaste company.

At this point, the movie begins to resemble Neil Jordan's 1986 film, "Mona Lisa," in which an ex-con falls in love with the call girl he's been hired to drive around town. But the tone of "My Son the Fanatic" is -- at first, anyway -- is much lighter than that of "Mona Lisa." One minor complaint is that Griffith's hooker is a bit too complacent about her job. She's not quite the clichéd hooker with a heart of gold, but even when she's being presented as damaged goods, she seems fairly content with the gig.

Luckily, Griffiths is good at opening the character up through small gestures. After she becomes a regular customer of the increasingly distasteful German businessman, Bettina starts to recognize the unadulterated affection that Parvez holds for her. A tender kiss she plants on the cabby is a sweet, effective moment that could've smacked of manipulation if played improperly.

You really feel for Bettina, but it's difficult to imagine Parvez rescuing her from her situation. Then the son's religious activity pushes the movie in a much darker direction that leads to a complex form of redemption for both characters.

After securing his father's drunken approval, Farid invites his sect's leader into their home ... along with 10 or 12 disciples. Suddenly, Parvez's house becomes home base for the sect's work. His wife starts covering her face in front of the men and taking her meals by herself in the kitchen, thus cementing her emotional estrangement from her husband. The cabby's home life becomes an increasingly volatile religious jamboree site.

Parvez is driven to reinvent his life as a means of establishing that his dreams and desires are still of real value. The escalating tensions compel him to surrender to his sexual urge for Bettina, but their passion quickly grows into real love. Now, this lonely, nearly vanquished man finds himself looking forward again, even as he's destroying what remains of his family. The son may be rebelling, but it's the father whose life has taken the most drastic turn.

This is a morally complicated situation, to be sure. It should be stated that Kureishi and Prasad paint the self-serving Muslim sect in the most unflattering of terms. But viewers should also recognize that the story is being told very much through Parvez's eyes. His life is exploding around him, and his passive nature is jolted awake by the upheaval.

No one, including Parvez, gets out of the story without indulging in some questionable behavior. Parvez, however, is the one who finds the most tenable form of inner peace, even when he thinks he's ruining himself. There are no easy answers, the filmmakers seem to be saying, but the answers do come.

"My Son the Fanatic" raises some difficult questions about faith and our duty to the people we love. There's bad language, a moment of ugly racism, a violent mob scene, sex and nudity. Catch-phrase connoisseurs beware -- meaningful dialogue is delivered in lieu of repeated shouts of "Yeah, baby!" Rated R. 87 minutes.