Films directed by Ken Loach tend to focus on problems of ordinary people, often immigrants, who are trapped by the system. Loach's latest, Ae Fond Kiss, deals with various forms of prejudice that try to keep two lovers apart, a variant on the Romeo & Juliet paradigm. When the film begins, Casim Khan (played by Atta Yaqub), a Pakistan born in Britain, helps his youngest sister, Tahara (played by Shabana Bakhsh), to respond to racial epithets. In the process, Casim and Tahara enter the classroom of Roisin Hanlon (played by Eva Birthistle), a part-time music teacher at a Catholic high school in Glasgow. Later, Casim returns to visit Roisin in order to repay her kindness, and the two in due course become lovers. Roisin is separated from her husband, whereas Casim has been betrothed for some years to a girl chosen by his parents who lives in Pakistan; his father, Tariq (played by Ahmad Riaz), is building an addition to his house to accommodate the couple. Sometime after having sex, Casim and Roisin realize that they need to live together, so Casim moves in rather than continuing to submit to his father's authority. However, Casim's father and mother Sadia (played by Shamshad Akhtar) are so distraught over Casim's conduct that they will not allow their oldest daughter, Rukhsana (played by Ghizala Avan) to marry, and they reject Tahara's decision to go to Edinburgh University, which has awarded her a scholarship to study journalism, because her parents want her to become a physician and to study in Glasgow. Tahara asks her father why the family moved to England if not to enjoy more opportunities, but he cannot answer her eloquent question. One day, Casim and Roisin fly to a seaside resort for a vacation; after having sex, Casim informs Roisin that he is to be married in two weeks. After Roisin loses her temper, Casim promises to solve the problem somehow so that he can remain with Roisin. Soon, Rukhsana meets Roisin and encourages her to kick out Casim so that so many people in her family can continue to proceed along the path dictated by her father, who is trying to preserve family customs despite a residence in Britain of some forty years in which the family runs a successful grocery store. Meanwhile, Roisin so impresses the school principal that she is offered a full-time position, subject to approval by the parish priest despite the fact that the school operates with public funds. The priest, however, refuses to give his blessing, citing the fact that Roisin is living and presumably having sex with someone other than her husband; he even goes over the head of the principal to have her reassigned to a nondenominational school. Thus, custom and prejudice are unkind to the two lovers. In the end, not all the problems can be solved; someone will be unhappy, but the protagonists will. Filmviewers will appreciate that many Britons face similar problems all the time, and perhaps Ae Fond Kiss will suggest how those problems are being or can be resolved today. MH
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