Heaven on Earth
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Drama
105 min
| 16 L V
Vibrant and irrepressibly alive, Chand is a young bride leaving her home in Ludhiana, India, for the cavernous landscape of Brampton, Ontario, where her arranged husband, Rocky, and his very traditional family await her arrival.
Everything is new and unfamiliar, including the quiet and shy Rocky who she meets for the first time at the Arrivals level of Pearson Airport. Chand approaches her new life and her new land with equanimity and grace, and at times the wide-eyed optimism of hope-her first snowfall is a tiny miracle of beauty, and the roar of Niagara Falls creates the excitement of new beginnings. But soon, optimism turns to isolation as the family she's inherited struggles beneath the weight of unspoken words - their collective frustration becoming palpable. No one feels the pressure more than Rocky, weighed down by familial obligations: A controlling mother who can’t let go, a sweet but ineffectual father and a sister with two children and an unemployed husband. All live with Rocky and Chand in a two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Toronto and Rocky is expected to find the money to bring his extended family to Canada. Unable to express his anger, he finds other ways to release it and it’s Chand who bears the brunt of his repressed rage. Trapped in a world she cannot comprehend and unable to please her husband, Chand is desperate.
Hope comes in the form of Rosa - a tough and savvy Jamaican-Canadian woman who works alongside Chand in a factory where immigrant women from all over the world clean and press dirty hotel laundry. Rosa sees past the make-up that covers Chand’s bruised face. Realising that Chand has nowhere to turn, Rosa gives her a magical root advising her “to put it in whatever the bastard drinks.” The root seduces the one who takes it, making them fall hopelessly in love with the person who gives it to them. Chand’s experiments with the magic root lead to surreal incidents and her life gradually begins to mirror an Indian fable involving a King Cobra. As the lines between fantasy and reality converge, Chand and Rocky come face to face with each other and themselves.
Cast
Preity Zinta, Balinder Johal, Gourrav Sihan, Rajinder Singh Cheema, Vansh Bhardwaj
Directed by
Deepa Mehta
Music
Mychael Danna