In an early scene of Shonali Boses’s stereotype-busting, coming-of-age feature, our protagonist Laila finds out her high school band has just won a battle of the bands competition because the jury found out there was a disabled student in the group. Asked by a homely-looking jury member if she can describe her journey to the prize, Laila, with a disgusted look on her face, sticks her middle finger up at the woman and reverses her wheelchair off the stage. Thus, the tone for this delightful film is set.

Bose is less concerned about depicting the struggles one faces with a disability, and more about the achievements and triumphs that await anyone in life, if they are willing to live and love a little. The beginning of the story follows a well-trodden path. Girl meets boy. Boy strings girl along. What will girl do? The girl in question, a mesmerising Punjabi teenager named Laila (Kalki Koechlin), has grown up with cerebral palsy, and is a high achiever at her high school in Delhi. In a week in which we’ve seen a pretty disgusting, ignorant, and pathetic set of comments come from a minister in the UK Department for Work and Pensions, it is refreshing to see such a wonderfully determined and successful character depicted on the big screen. James Marsh’s early years of Stephen Hawking biopic, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, will hopefully elicit a similar response upon its release in January.

A creative writing scholarship to NYU opens up the chance for Laila to grow culturally and emotionally, and although she lives with her Mum (who travels over with her on the plane) for the first month, New York is hers to independently discover. Enter blind young activist Khanum, and the film enters the LGBT territory that up until this point, has been absent from the  narrative.

… try and find a  film involving bisexuality that isn’t full of horrendous cliches, and you’ll end up pulling your hair out.

The focal letter from this acronym is not the expected L or G, but the very much lesser used in filmmaking B for Bisexual. Cue a very funny and heartwarming coming-out scene, for an English speaking audience, in which it turns out that bi also means something else in Delhi. Films that feature bisexuality are few and far between. This is evident in co-programming the Queers in Shorts queer-themed short film night at the Arts Picturehouse Cinema. Lesbian, Gay and Trans themes are no problem, but try and find a short or feature film involving bisexuality that isn’t full of horrendous cliches, and you’ll end up pulling your hair out. Thank goodness for Bose’s latest feature then, as it is refreshingly devoid of any of these cliches, and carries with it a rather unique cross-cultural appeal, that should help make marketing it an easier job for distributors in the East and West.

Supported by the Sundance Screenwriters Lab 2012, and selected for the Work in Progress Lab of Film Bazaar 2013 (a trade market for film industry professionals in India), MARGARITA, WITH A STRAW is really rather refreshing to watch on the big screen. But where it will sit in terms of UK distribution is anyone’s guess. It positions itself right down Peccadillo Pictures’ street of LGBT and World Cinema. Perhaps someone like Curzon Home Cinema or Picturehouse Entertainment would be interested in the film too, given the runaway success of THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL and THE LUNCHBOX in recent years. MARGARITA is a funny and sensitive arthouse take on the coming-of-age tale; it is a one-off, and all the better for it.

httpvh://youtu.be/JDh7n6bte-c