Sundance 2010: Audiences discover the grisly, goofy ‘It’s a Wonderful Afterlife’
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It’s not spoiling anything to reveal that in the opening moments of ‘It’s a Wonderful Afterlife,’ the latest comedy from ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ director-co-writer Gurinder Chadha, a man’s stomach explodes in violent fashion. We’re talking buckets upon buckets of spicy curry rocketing up and over the faces of the emergency room doctors surrounding him. Chadha, it seems, is venturing into the tricky terrain of horror-comedy.
The movie, set in London’s Indian community, deals with a doting mother (Shabana Azmi) whose worries that her overweight daughter (Goldy Notay) will never find a husband cause her to begin murdering anyone who spurns her. The spirits of the deceased take offense and begin haunting the mother, urging her to commit suicide to set their spirits free. The mother, of course, refuses to go until she sees her daughter married.
The crowd at the Tuesday night premiere at the Eccles Theatre was a little older than the usual Sundance crowd and the film seemed to play well for them. Especially a well-timed ‘Carrie’ parody with ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’s’ Sally Hawkins that Chadha claimed is the scene the entire movie was built around. As one man said after the screening, ‘I read the description of this film and I was really nervous it would be a horrible misfire. But she pulled it off.’
During the Q&A following the screening, an audience member demanded to know how the exploding stomach gag was done. Chadha responded, ‘I don’t know if I should tell you the secret of the exploding stomach. Someone like James Cameron may pinch my special effects.’
We polled a few people in the lobby after the screening to get their reactions, and most echoed the sentiments of this woman:
--Patrick Kevin Day
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