The sister’s journey has been different from hers, but here, too, the man is key. Shashi enrols in a four-week class to learn English. After she reaches New York to help her elder sister ( Sujatha Kumar) plan her daughter’s wedding, her not knowing English becomes a daily handicap. English Vinglish is the journey of Shashi from a “vernac" wife and mom to an English-speaking wife and mom. Shinde’s tools then are only actors and dialogue. The art direction is detailed, and the costumes are tasteful. Its production value is uncompromised, and has the finesse of a lavishly produced commercial. So as far as cinematic technique goes, English Vinglish is sorely bereft of imagination. We see Manhattan through a hurried montage of boring location shots, peppily set to a track which uses the word “Manhattan" many times over, composed by the film’s music director Amit Trivedi.
Some of the imagery is even tacky, like an introduction to Manhattan. There is no defined visual scheme to accentuate the story. The plot is thin, with the depth of a mediocre television serial. The husband is strikingly shallow-he is either ridiculing his wife, or is busy attending to office calls. The writer and debut director builds up a buoyant mood from early on, moving with a linear and predictable graph. It is a winning theme for a film, rife with dramatic possibilities-the underdog, her struggles, her victory against the odds.
Shinde’s premise is simple: A woman can change her situation, love herself, and get the family to love her back. Shashi ( Sridevi), in Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish, is that woman.
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