Year: 2004
Starring: Atta Yaqub as Casim Khan / Eva Birthistle as Roisin Hanlon
MPAA Rating: R
Also known as: Bacio appassionato, Un (Italy), Beso cariñoso, Un (Spain), Just a Kiss (Europe: English title)

This review contains specific plot points.

Boy meets girl. Girls meets boy. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy.

“Your family will be ruined!” exclaimed the boy’s best friend, when he confessed his love for the girl, for the first time.

Why such grave consequences? Because he is a second generation Muslim Pakistani and she is a Catholic Irish, in Glasgow.

Casim worked as a DJ and dreamed of buying his own club. He dressed and spoke English like any other young white man in Glasgow. More importantly, like any other young Muslim man, his parents arranged for him to marry his cousin from Pakistan, and his proud father had eagerly planned and built with his own hands, a new wing to their house where Casim and his new family was to live after the wedding.

Life was not without its little bumps, such as when his family members met with racist abuse at school or on the streets, but it was the way of life. Other than Casim’s rebellious sister, nobody questioned their place in the community and their path to take.

Until Casim met Roisin.

As much as he knew falling for her was going to wreck all plans and beliefs shaping his life thus far, the magnitude of their love exceeded all expectations, and disaster brewed.

This film, Ae Fond Kiss, directed by Ken Loach, is not the only movie dealing with cross-cultural love in the UK, or America. Other examples include East is East, Jungle Fever, and to a certain extent, a more recent Bride and Prejudice.

But the understated brilliance of Ae Fond Kiss, is the way it takes no stand and allows no melodramatic story telling. The plain and straightforward portrayal of this particular love story makes one feel as though this is no exceptional love story at all, but one that happens every day. One that repeats itself in lives of many men and women in Glasgow, in the UK, in the world. Every day.

Unlike East is East, where stereotypical characters are key to its comic effect, Ae Fond Kiss gives even rationalization to every character’s beliefs and position so each person comes alive and the viewer cannot help but sympathize with them all, even when they are on two different sides of the fence.

Casim had never stood up to his parents’ expectations of him, not because he didn’t know better, but because he had an implicit understanding of his family and could not bear to hurt his parents any further with disobedience. His marriage was not to be his personal choice, but his parents’ because it implicated his family’s standing in the Muslim-Asian community. As a direct result of his scandal, for example, Casim’s elder sister’s engagement was called off by her fiance’s parents.

Torn between the woman and the family he both loved, Casim suffered immense stress and at one point, all the pressure erupted into one impassioned argument when he felt cornered by Roisin’s demands on him. Casim cried out that Roisin knew nothing of what his family had had to go through to find freedom in Glasgow. Roisin was insulted, but had no words to refute his accusation. The cultural gulf that existed between the two was never more sharply felt.

In a more tender moment later, Casim revealed that he was named after his father’s twin brother who was lost (and presumed dead) in their escape. It was a fact that had branded in his heart the burden of living in perfect goodness to make up for the older Casim’s misfortune, his very name a constant reminder of his father’s painful past.

Ae Fond Kiss makes no judgment on arranged marriages, I feel that is not the point to the film. Instead, it magnifies to heart wrenching proportions the dilemma between loyalty and responsibility to one’s family and one’s heart, possibly an issue that faces most interracial lovers today.

When Casim first spoke of breaking up with Roisin, he explained he could no longer continue with the relationship because it would break his parent’s hearts. Roisin pleaded defiantly, “What about your heart? What about my heart?”

Indeed, what about your heart? And mine? Whether or not you are involved in an interracial relationship right now, go on and take a journey with Roisin and Casim, this film would bring you right into the heart of someone who is.

Cindy Khoo is a Halfway Staff Writer

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