Apron Strings (Sima Urale, 2008): New Zealand

Reviewed by Collier Grimm. Viewed at the 2009 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Make sure you’ve had something to eat before viewing Sima Urale‘s Apron Strings, at the 2009 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. To be more specific, fill up on Indian food and wedding cakes. Urale has transformed the unappealing combination of morsels, traditional values, family heartache, and the timely theme of acceptance, to create quite a dish of a film.

Apron Strings centers around two mothers reluctant to “cut” the proverbial strings they’ve weaved through adult sons lives. The film takes place in New Zealand, a modern melting pot of color, dialect, and taste buds. As both families struggle to maintain traditions from their past, they are constantly forced to deal with the realities of an ever-evolving society.

Loma, played by Jennifer Ludlum, a provincial white middle-class cake maker, makes her first appearance in the film discussing bride and groom cake decorations, and sarcastically apologizes to a patron for not stocking a mixed race couple. “I could just dip the bride in chocolate”. However, this seemingly unimportant scene foreshadows an inert racism she reveals at the birth of her mixed race granddaughter. Loma struggles with the reality that her 35-year-old son still lives with her- and her fear that forcing him to grow up will lead to his eventual suicide. We learn that her husband ended his life after she divorced him and Loma is not looking to repeat her loss.

Across town Anita, Lalla Rouass, a famous television show host, lives with her 21-year-old son Michael. Anita prepares traditional Indian food on her show, but hates the fact that her producers constantly push her to act and look more Indian. Her very traditional Indian family rejected Anita and her late husband, a white English man, and she was forced to raise her son alone after her husband’s death. Michael yearns to find his Indian roots and after locating Anita’s estranged sister, he applies for a job at her curry house under false pretenses.

Well you can imagine how the plot thickens from there. As lies and family secrets are uncovered, each character is forced to re-define their beliefs and adjust traditions accordingly. The film flows like icing on a cake, the plot is predictable but satisfying, the characters deliciously complex but somehow so straightforward.

Co-produced by a New Zealand Television company, and starring seasoned TV actors, this film isn’t your summer blockbuster. As the credits ran, my neighbor to the left commented on the films similarity to a Lifetime Channel movie and hit it right on the nose. This film won’t blow your mind, but it will certainly arouse your appetite.