In English and Punjabi
Genre: Drama
Director: Jag Mundhra
Cast: Aishwarya Rai, Naveen Andrews and Miranda Richardson
RunTime: 1 hr 53 mins
Released By: GVP
Rating: NC-16
Official Website: http://www.provokedthemovie.com/

Opening Day: 26 April 2007

Synopsis :

Unable to bear the brutality and repeated rapes by her allegedly abusive and alcoholic husband, a battered Punjabi housewife and mother of two, Kiranjit Ahluwalia sets fire to her abusive husband, Deepak Ahluwalia and kills him unintentionally. Charged with murder, she is sentenced to life imprisonment where she befriends her cellmate, a wealthy white woman named Veronica Scott, who teaches her English. Kiranjit’s case comes to the notice of a group of South Asian social workers running an underfunded organization called the "Southall Black Sisters". They bring her plight to the attention of the media by organizing rallies to gather public support for her freedom.

Kiranjit is ultimately freed by the judicial system in a landmark case called "Regina vs. Ahluwalia", that redefined the word PROVOCATION in the case of a battered woman. She reunites with her children and is subsequently given an award by the Prime Minister's wife for her crusade against domestic violence.

Movie Review:

There are many reasons to like “Provoked” but there are also many reasons to dislike it as well. Casting Naveen Andrews and Aishwarya Rai who are probably the most well-known and recognisable South Asian actors in the West has a point, but I’m sure but it wasn’t for any specific creative reasons. Based on a true case (as the film does remind us incessantly) that changed the legal definition of Provocation in the UK especially by recognising battered-wife syndrome.

A mixture of fear, anger and retribution drove Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Rai) to set fire to her sleeping husband, Deepak Ahluwalia (Andrews) in their London flat, hours after being abused. The film argues that sufficiently enough when the bulk of its narrative intercrosses flashbacks of the fire and the domestic abuses leading up to it, with high-handed courtroom drama and unbelievable prison bonding sessions. It all leads up to a surprisingly reasonable finale that actually manages to be sensitive despite its indiscretions. But what it does miss out on is the psychological perspectives leading up to it when Andrews’s role is nothing more than an dubious caricature of sadistic masculinity that his very nature beggars belief. It is possible to imagine this Kiranjit’s story being told in an emotionally flamboyant film and thankfully, it does employ a wistful tone that props up the procedural aspects of it that forms a large part of the film.

Rai’s first de-glamourised role has an agenda surely, both in its marketing and the actress’s attempt to successfully cross the pond. For a considerable part, she’s got the role down pat as an emotionally ravaged woman but there are more than a few digressions in the performance that points as much to the scripting and direction as it does to her competent performance. Some of these asides include dialogue that is effusively passionate and strained in a way that is simply not convincing and that is dangerous territory for an actress mostly known for her glitz and panache in front of the camera, to give herself a complete overhaul in a lightweight screenplay.

Despite occasionally faltering into scenes so overwrought that it threatens to exploit our empathy for beaten women, it does manage to avoid a you-go-girlism agenda that would have revelled in the revenge more than its conscionable reasons. Remarkably that restraint is borne by its director Jag Mundhra, who has by all accounts, made a career out of the West’s burgeoning sexual curiosity of Indian female exoticism by way of direct-to-video, inside the backroom, on the bottom of the shelf productions.

Movie Rating:

(A cross-cultural effort that for the most part feels insubstantial)

Review by Justin Deimen