Buddha of Suburbia
It's difficult to appreciate the controversy and moral furore which this adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's debut novel provoked. It's drenched in drugs and sex, which everybody seemed to enjoy, but Kureishi's insistence on creating characters who were not simply social ciphers proved more contentious.
For once, a character's morality, meekness, virtue or villainy could not be assessed by simply crosschecking gender and cultural background. "Liberals want to see black or Asian people... as the beneficiaries of their attentions or worthy goodness" argued Kureishi, who ensured that the witty script, which he co-wrote, rejected political correctness.
Naveen Andrews plays the charismatic Karim, a half-Asian, half-English, wholly hedonistic chancer who is mortified when his civil servant father (Roshan Seth) plunges into an affair with the exotic Eva and begins passing himself off as a spiritual guru. This brings Karim into contact with Eva's wayward son, Charlie, and ostensibly offers an escape from suburbia. The story follows his break-out, from London to New York, constantly snagging himself on cultural barbwire and falling into situations a raconteur would die for.
This horribly compulsive comedy-drama, blessed with cracking dialogue and near-perfect casting, is not simply set in 1970s - it showcases them. To an energetic soundtrack by David Bowie, director Roger Michell depicts the good, the bad and the ugly from that era. There is the good - a generation no longer fighting for freedom but enjoying it. The bad - endemic racism and social confusion. And the ugly, which during the 70s was every inch of flawed fashion and every square yard of geometric wallpaper.
Although he blazed a trail for successes such as White Teeth and Bend it Like Beckham, Kureishi once declared that his main concern was writing entertaining art. When interviewed about The Buddha of Suburbia, for example, one journalist questioned whether he was "hard" enough in dealing with social issues, likening him to an Asian John Mortimer".
"I've never been so flattered in my life," replied Kureishi.
