Cosmopolitan | |
---|---|
Directed by | Nisha Ganatra |
Produced by | Brian Devine Jason Orans Jen Small |
Written by |
Sabrina Dhawan (screenplay) Akhil Sharma (short story) |
Starring |
Roshan Seth Carol Kane Madhur Jaffrey Purva Bedi |
Music by |
Andrew Lockington (score) Chris Rael (songs) |
Cinematography | Matthew Clark |
Production
company |
Gigantic Pictures
KTEH |
Distributed by | Gigantic Pictures PBS ITVS |
Release date
|
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Running time
|
53 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English Hindi |
Cosmopolitan is a 2003 American independent film starring Roshan Seth and Carol Kane, and directed by Nisha Ganatra. The film, based on an acclaimed short story by Akhil Sharma and written by screenwriter Sabrina Dhawan (Monsoon Wedding), is a cross-cultural romance between a confused and lonely middle-aged Indian, who has lived in America for 20 years, and his exasperating, free-spirited blonde neighbour.
The film was released theatrically in 2003. It was televised nationally in 2004 on the PBS series Independent Lens.
In an American suburb in Northern New Jersey, conservative, middle-aged Indian immigrant Gopal, a telephone-company engineer who has taken early retirement, is celebrating Diwali in November with his wife and grown daughter. His daughter suddenly tells him that she is leaving indefinitely to teach English in Mongolia with her German boyfriend. As Gopal recovers from this shock and tries to talk her out of it, largely on the grounds that she will be living in sin in his eyes, his wife Madhu announces that she is leaving him as well, and is taking up the spiritual life in an ashram in India.
Confused, mortified, bored, and directionless, newly single Gopal lies to his few Indian-American acquaintances about the situation, and refuses to answer his daughter's phone calls from Mongolia. He tries to cope with his emptiness by redecorating slightly, searching through the various corners of his small house, reading newspapers, and watching videos of Bollywood romance extravaganza films. Desperately lonely, he latches upon a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine that had belonged to his daughter, and takes a quiz gauging a man's suitability for a relationship – which reveals that he is a "Ditchable Dude".