by Rachel Stibi

Created on: July 26, 2008   Last Updated: August 31, 2008

Bend it like Beckham is an entertaining, funny, and heartfelt film about two young energetic girls growing up in London and their desire to play football (or Soccer) more than anything in the world. It is a coming of age story as well as one of friendships, crossing cultural boundaries, and most of all a story about love, particularly the love of football.

Jess or Jesminder Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) is a high school age Indian-English girl who loves to play football; her room is plastered with pictures of David Beckham, and she wears a jersey with his number and name when she plays in the park. Her traditional Indian parents let her play football when she was young, but with her sister Pinky's (Archie Panjabi) wedding coming up and university entrance exams around the corner, they decide it is time for her to grow up and stop playing games.

Jules or Juliette Paxton (Keira Knightley) is an average English girl with a love for football partly spurred on by her mother Paula's (Juliet Stevenson) loathing for the game and her father Alan's (Frank Harper) love for her. She watches Jess play in the park from afar until one day she invites her to try out for her all-girls football team, and friendship ensues.
When Jess comes to try out for the team she meets Joe (Jonathan Rhys Myers). Joe coaches the girls' team, and he sees promise in Jess, so he puts her on the team, but when her parents forbid her to be on the team, she lies about having a job and goes to practice anyway. Everything is going fine until one day Jess is seen with Jules at a bus stop by the future in-laws of her sister Pinky, Jules is mistaken for a boy because of her short hair and the wedding is called off even though the in-laws misunderstand what they see. In anger and frustration the secret of Jess playing football comes out and she is forbidden once again to play.

The misunderstanding is eventually sorted out and the wedding is on again, Pinky and her mother Mrs. Bhamra (Shaheen Kahn) immediately start preparing for the occasion and Mr. Bhamra (Anupam Kher) reminds Jess that she has family duties that will take her away from football and her new friends; essentially that she must grow up. The Indian engagement and wedding scenes are full of colorful clothes, traditional dancing, and other aspects of westernized Indian culture in England, all approached with an obvious love and affection for both cultures, and yet still funny and real. This even includes a wonderfully comical scene where a cell phone

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