The Rules of Engagement

By Richard Schickel Sunday, Mar. 17, 2002
    • Think of Jessica Stein as yet another victim in the endless urban guerrilla warfare of today's battle of the sexes. Trapped in a dull job, her ambitions as a painter thwarted, she draws her hopeless dating choices from a dismal sludge of geeks, nerds and cranks.

    Think of the Verma family of New Delhi as its own little Third World country, plagued by deficits, rebels and the uneasy coexistence of traditional ways and new ideas. Its greatest asset is a high-spirited daughter; its largest problem is making sure she goes through with the wedding it has arranged for her with a perfect stranger.

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    But don't think of Kissing Jessica Stein and Monsoon Wedding as routine romantic comedies, a genre that in recent years has become increasingly desperate in its search for ways of funnily frustrating its lovers for 90 minutes or so, until the inevitable reconciliation. Think of these movies, instead, as delightful comments on how the rules of romantic engagement have loosened in the contemporary world.

    Especially for the grimly chipper Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt). Spotting what sounds like a perfect soul mate in a personals column, she also spies trouble: the ad is in the lesbian section. But, still, what's wrong with having an innocent drink with Helen Cooper (Heather Juergensen)? Nothing--except that Helen is a lot more decisive than Jessica. The design for living they develop can hardly be called a romp. It is, instead, an edgy exploration of role playing and sexual choice in a climate where all options are acceptable--even to Jessica's mom, who is not as traditionally suburban and Jewish as she first seems. Written by its two leading actresses and alertly, discreetly directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, the movie avoids commitment to either a gay or straight agenda. Each woman is allowed to act on the logic of her most basic sexual impulses. What they gain from their experience is a certain wisdom. What we gain from it is laughter that is wry but never sniggering.

    Meanwhile, in Delhi, the rains and the relatives are arriving for a wedding the father can't afford, his daughter is dubious about (she has been having an affair with a slick TV host) and many of the guests and servants are distracted from as they pursue their own romantic interests. Though director Mira Nair and writer Sabrina Dhawan manage to pull a persuasively perverse thread through their canvas, their main line of business is frenzy. Anyone who has ever staged a big wedding on a tight budget will adore the many ways they work their central joke.

    But Monsoon Wedding has something else on its mind. More jostling and bumptious in spirit than Kissing Jessica Stein, it shares a similar idea, which is that the way for romance to prosper in the modern world is to leave it some space to mess around with conventional expectations. These short, sweet (and low-budget) movies refuse to develop predictably. But they bring their characters to good, slightly surprising, quite satisfying places. And leave us beaming happily.