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Writer and director Nida Manzoor has shared her passion about period representation on screen ahead of the release of her new film, Polite Society.
The movie follows Ria (Priya Kansara), a budding stuntwoman who feels she must save her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) from her impending marriage with her seemingly perfect fiancé – and everything, naturally, comes to a head in an ambitious wedding heist.
Polite Society’s influences are a broad and eclectic mix of action films and Bollywood movies, as well as specific titles like The Matrix and Devdas.
However, with a relationship between two young women at its heart, Manzoor also includes what is often a rarity in films, and that is discussion around menstruation.
In one scene, Lena and her fiancé end up talking about her period with his mother at the breakfast table after she accidentally bleeds on his sheets and Manzoor was determined to keep that in the film.
‘I feel passionately about period representation in cinema, there’s not enough,’ she told Metro.co.uk.
‘It’s bizarrely something that happens to every woman every month all the time. And yet if you were an alien, you land on this planet, and you were like, “What are humans about?”, you wouldn’t know women have periods! So I’m super passionate about period representation, especially in an action movie.’
She also revealed the crew were invested in the topic’s inclusion too.
‘That scene was exciting for a lot of the women on set I remember, just to be seen in that way. It meant so much and I want to have a period scene and everything I do from now on – the next Alien movie will have some period [content]!’
Lead actress Kansara chimed in: ‘It’s crazy! It’s like, we eat, we sleep, we breathe, we have a period, it’s part of life. It’s weird that we feel like it’s okay to talk about sex or other things that are natural and are considered part of life so why can’t we talk about this? Like, it’s just something that happens to us. It’s fine, mention it, it happens – let’s get over it, people!’
Manzoor had a lot to juggle with bringing Polite Society to the big screen, but for her the most important part of its story was Ria and Lena’s relationship.
‘With a film that is putting together so many genres, I really needed to make sure that the emotional heart – the emotional through line – was there, the characters felt complex and nuanced, and that the story between the two sisters was really resonating,’ she explained.
‘I did constant sister passes on the script where I rewrote it just looking at the sister beats to make sure they were there – because that’s really what makes you enjoy the action, it’s when you love the characters and you want to see them succeed. That was what I was really keeping my eye on as I was writing it.’
Manzoor namechecks her older sister Sanya as a ‘huge support’, as well as using their own relationship for inspiration.
‘I remember growing up how it could be like, we hated each other, we were at each other’s throats, we would fight together, we’d have to fight in martial arts class, at school there was a kind of tension – but there was also so much love.
‘I think there’s something so specific about a sister relationship that I feel that it’s so fun to get to show the darknesses and the light of that, and that was really important to me.’
Kansara was also full or praise for her co-star, Barbie actress Arya.
‘This sister relationship really is truly the heart of this film, and I felt so lucky to be able to work with Ritu. I feel like we just had such a natural chemistry between the two of us, she really is like my own sister. To get to do this with her and to show that journey with the two of them was just so special,’ she shared.
Polite Society also features an impressive amount of action, dramatic violence and beautiful stunt work. All of this was a pretty big ask of Kansara, who had ‘zero’ stunt experience, and had never done any form of martial arts either.
‘It was all very, very new to me. I had about six, seven weeks before we started the shoot from when I was cast to get on board and work with the stunt team as much as possible. I was training three, sometimes four times a week, and working closely with our stunt coordinator, our fight coordinator and my double,’ she explained to Metro.co.uk.
‘I learned a lot through imitation and learning how my double did it so that I could copy her and try and do the same kind of thing, but also ensuring that I was adding Ria to it, because that was my job as an actor to bring Ria through in everything, in her physicality in these stunts.
‘It was a lot to absorb and do, but it being so fresh to me was really fun. I felt so empowered by the entire team that was so incredible – and I’m sure it was a hard task to get me to do all of that! But they really, truly succeeded and they were so wonderful.’
Over the course of the film, Ria is seen struggling to master an extremely challenging spin-kick, involving more than a single full rotation mid-air, into which Kansara felt she could definitely pour her own practice.
‘I thought that was really cool because that mirrored my own experience with that. I remember starting on the wires in the first rehearsals on the wires, I could barely get around and make a full turn, and it’s because you’re kind of opposing that force when you’re on the wires. It took a while,’ the actress recalled.
‘I remember the first time I landed an actual kick, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs! Then every time from then on, it got a bit better and a bit better, and I was able to get my leg up better or make it straight or do this angle, and my hands was better.
‘I was experiencing Ria’s journey in my own training process and that was so cathartic to then be able to bring into her character, and it felt so right.’
Polite Society opens in cinemas on Friday April 28.
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