Combining traditional ideas of marriage and family with the realities of modern life, MONSOON WEDDING is a lighthearted film from director Mira Nair (SALAAM BOMBAY!). The majority of the film takes place inside the home of an extended Punjabi family living in New Delhi who has gathered together for the arranged wedding of Adita (Vasundhara Das). She is to marry Hemant (Parveen Dabaas), a man who works in the United States. This means leaving her family home to go live with him, and though Adita says she welcomes the new opportunity, it is clear that she already feels homesick. Also at issue is the fact that she is still in love with her former boss, Vikram (Sameer Arya), a television producer who promises to divorce his wife but never does. Though Adita is careful to hide her true feelings from her family, her sister Ria (Shefali Shetty) worries that she is marrying for the wrong reasons. Ria has issues of her own. She wants to go to school in the United States and become a writer, but her family would prefer her to follow a more traditional path, and they claim that money is the reason. Meanwhile, the rebellious wedding planner, P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz) is falling in love with the family maid, Alice (Tilotama Shome). Sparks also fly between two of Adita's cousins, Ayesha (Neha Dubey) and Rahul (Randeep Hooda), who meet at the wedding and find that their conflicting values are a good challenge for each other. A festive film, MONSOON WEDDING is a swirling family comedy.

Theatrical release: February 22, 2002 (NY/LA)

DVD Features:

Region 1
Widescreen - 1.85
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English

Distributor Notes: Cultures and families clash in Mira Nair's exuberant MONSOON WEDDING, a mix of comedy and chaotic melodrama concerning the preparations for the arranged marriage of a modern upper-middle-class Indian family's only daughter, Aditi. Of course there are hitches--Aditi has been having an affair with a married TV host; she's never met her husband to be, who lives in Houston; the wedding has worsened her father's hidden financial troubles; even the wedding planner has become a nervous wreck--as well as burried family secrets. But Nair's celebration is ultimately joyful and cathartic: a love song to her home city of Delhi and her own Punjabi family. 

Naseeruddin Shah: Indian Actor; SPICES (1986), SUCH A LONG JOURNEY (1998)
Lillete Dubey: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Vasundhara Das: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Parveen Dabaas: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Kulbhushan Kharbanda: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Kamini Khanna: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Shefali Shetty: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Vijay Raaz: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Tilotama Shome: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)
Rajat Kapoor: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Neha Dubey: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Randeep Hooda: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Sameer Arya: Actor, MONSOON WEDDING (2002)
Soni Razdan: Indian Actress

Mira Nair: Indian Director

Caroline Baron: Producer
Mira Nair: Indian Director

Sabrina Dhawan: Screenwriter, MONSOON WEDDING (2001)

Mychael Danna: Score Composer

"...WEDDING often has the energy of a Bollywood spectacle..."
"...Nair's latest movie feels hearteningly assured..."
"...An energetic and amusing drama about the power of love to make things whole....MONSOON WEDDING has an engaging warmth and an effortless sense of life..."
"...One of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature....What strikes you immediately about MONSOON WEDDING is the quickness of the comedy, the deft way Nair moves between story lines..."
"...The film teems with life, in every corner of the frame..."
"[A] comical, and at one point, startling film about an upwardly mobile Punjabi family....A string of small, exquisite gems."