Polite Society(2023)

Plot Summary

• In London, British-Pakistani teenager Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) aspires to become a movie stunt performer like her idol, Eunice Huthart. Under an alter ego, "the Fury", Ria creates films of martial arts training (called Khan-Fu) with the help of her older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), who has dropped out of art school and moved back in with their loving but traditional parents, Fatima (Shobu Kapoor) and Rafe (Jeff Mirza), both of them discouraging Ria's dreams. Ria cannot get the reverse spinning kick right despite a lot of practice. Rafe wants Lena to take a job as a receptionist, which the whole family is against.At school, Ria is inseparable from her friends Clara (Seraphina Beh) and Alba (Ella Bruccoleri), but their disapproving teacher urges her to pursue a more "serious" career like a doctor as opposed to Stuntwoman that Ria insists on. Ria's emails to Eunice about a potential Mentorship go unanswered, and she is soundly defeated by the school bully Kovacs (Shona Babayemi). The Khan family is invited to an Eid party by Raheela (Nimra Bucha), the leader of Fatima's social circle of Pakistani mothers, at her lavish mansion. Ria realizes the party has been arranged to find a suitable match for Raheela's son Salim (Akshay Khanna), a successful geneticist, but is unable to stop Lena from agreeing to a date.Lena and Salim start dating regularly. Lena is wearing cardigans and kissing Salim, which infuriates Ria. To Ria's horror, Lena is charmed by Salim and, after a few whirlwind weeks of dating, agrees to marry him and move to Singapore. Despite their parents' support, Ria's refusal to accept Lena's choices, including abandoning her art career, drives the sisters apart. Ria says that Lena is pulling a Jane Austin. Convinced there must be a more sinister explanation, Ria enlists Clara and Alba's help to spy on Salim. Ria says that Lena is too low on confidence to really figure out how she has been derailed from her plans of being an artist.They concoct an elaborate plan to steal his laptop (while he is at the gym). But then Salim finishes his routine and Clara needed more time to download the material from the laptop, so Ria distracts him while her friends hack his computer, but they find nothing incriminating. Salim tells Ria that he really loves Lena. At various instances it is shown that Salim is very close to his mother, and his mother has an eerie smile on her.Desperate to sabotage Lena's relationship, Ria lashes out at her friends, and breaks into Salim's bedroom to plant used condoms. She is caught and confronts Salim with a Lovey-Dovey picture showing him together with a pretty girl (which she found in a box kept under Salim's bed). When her parents and Lena are summoned, Ria alleges that Salim has another wife in Singapore that he has been hiding from everyone.Salim explains is his first wife who died in childbirth. Salim says she had a heart attack while going into labor, but the doctors could not detect what it was. Salim claims that he is opening his new lab in his wife's memory so that things like this do not happen again. Furious, Lena berates Ria, telling her to give up the fantasies that she will change her mind about the marriage or that Ria will ever become a stunt-woman. Raheela is feeding vitamin tablets to Lena under the guise of trying to fix her heavy period flows.At odds with her sister and ignored by her friends, Ria gives up martial arts. She visits Raheela to apologize and is dragged into joining her spa day, where Raheela reveals her true colors and tortures Ria with waxing. Fighting off Raheela's staff, Ria stumbles into the mansion's secret lab (where he was growing 2 fetus) and discovers that all the eligible women at the Eid party were secretly scanned and tested, and Lena was selected for her fertility and strong uterus. Ria escapes the mansion by breaking the window in the basement labEscaping back home, Ria realizes she cannot convince her family of the truth. She tells Clara and Alba, and together they devise a plan, persuading Kovacs to drive them to the wedding to rescue Lena. Kovacs is the only peer who has a car (as her dad got it for her 16th birthday), and in exchange they offer to do her history coursework for the rest of the year, as Kovacs is failing the subject. Ria distracts the guests with a spectacular Filmi (Bollywood-style) dance ("Maar Dala") while Clara and Alba, disguised as waiters, sneak past the armed guard at Lena's door. They chloroform Lena and hide her inside a tea trolley, but Raheela captures Ria, and reveals she and Salim plan to impregnate Lena with a clone of Raheela. Raheela chokes Ria till she gives up Lena's location. Her friends were listening to the entire conversation on microphones.Forced to return Lena, the friends are locked in the bridal suite as the wedding begins, but Kovacs comes to their rescue and subdues the guard. Taking his gun, Ria holds Raheela at gunpoint and exposes her plan, leading Lena to remember being drugged and tested by Salim, who admits that his first wife died carrying his mother's clone. Raheela seizes the gun but is disarmed by Fatima, as Ria's family and friends fight off the guests and Raheela's staff.Lena subdues Salim while Ria finally masters a reverse spinning kick to defeat Raheela, and the police arrive as the sisters drive off in Kovacs' car. Reconciling with Lena, Ria finally receives an encouraging email from Eunice, and the sisters celebrate together.

Storyline

• A merry mash up of sisterly affection, parental disappointment and bold action, Polite Society follows martial artist-in-training Ria Khan who believes she must save her older sister Lena from her impending marriage. After enlisting the help of her friends, Ria attempts to pull off the most ambitious of all wedding heists in the name of independence and sisterhood. — Focus Features Rebellious teenager Ria Khan wants nothing to do with her family's expectations. Instead, she dreams of becoming a stuntwoman. And then, charming scientist Salim, the embodiment of everything Ria detests, enters the picture to worm his way into big sister Lena's unsuspecting heart. But not if Ria can help it. And having devised an audacious plan, Ria and her plucky school chums embark on a challenging mission to prove everyone wrong: the handsome suitor is not a good catch. After all, Ria smells a rat. What if the little sister is onto something? — Nick Riganas