Duniya Journal

by Imtiaz Popat

Eisha Marjara’s Canadian Melodrama Calorie will be featured at the Sunder Prize Film Festival.  Like her previous film, Marjara explores discovering identity. This time she goes into her own past through this fictional story.  

Monika Singh (Ellora Patnaik) a recently divorced, Sikh-Canadian architect is at a crossroads in her life. She’s overwhelmed and under-appreciated at work. Her 13-year-old teenaged daughter, Alia (Shanaya Dhillon-Birmhan), who obsessed with her body image, counting calories, skipping meals, and maintaining a rigid workout regiment. Her 17-year-old daughter, Simi (Ashley Ganger), is a singer, who in love with a boy she plans to move in with the second she turns 18.

The family travels to India, visiting their Uncle Mohan (Anupam Kher) and Auntie Gurdeep (Dolly Ahluwalia). Alia and Simi have never been to Indian before, and their set-in-stone ways run afoul of a major case of culture shock.

The trip will further drive a wedge between mother and her daughters when the kids learn that Monika has been lying to them about how their grandmother died. She hid the traumatic truth that her grand mother had died in the 1985 Air India bombing.

Marjara takes great pains at examining not only the tremendous feeling of loss during one of the most devastating terrorist acts to impact Canadians, but also the lives lost during the Indian government’s deadly Operation Blue Star, which occurred at an iconic and revered temple in the film’s chosen setting of Amritsar.

Marjara also revisits other personal traumas and works from her past, by giving one of the primary characters an eating disorder, a topic the director previously covered in her short film Am I the Skinniest Person You’re Ever Seen?.

This melodrama is very compelling with a thing of Bollywood flavor. Particularly with the Bollywood screen legend Amupum Kher. The story, direction, cinematography and the music weaves a heartwarming story about healing from our traumatic past.