the reluctant fundamentalist

Shopping (Mark Albiston & Louis Sutherland) starts with archive tele­vi­sion news foot­age of the infam­ous 1970s dawn raids, tooled-up cops break­ing down doors to track down “over­stay­ers”. As a scene-setter it’s impress­ive. It gives the film an imme­di­ate sense of men­ace but it doesn’t fol­low through – the cops nev­er arrive and the threat of deport­a­tion back to the islands (like almost everything else in the film) is nev­er dis­cussed. So, nar­rat­ively then, Shopping may dis­ap­point but as a psy­cho­lo­gic­al por­trait of ali­en­ated work­ing class teen­age life it excels.

Newcomer Kevin Paulo is Willie, stuck in a dead-end job dream­ing of some­thing bet­ter. His white fath­er (Alistair Browning, often threat­en­ing but with a heart in the right place) wants him to work hard and get on while his Samoan moth­er Theresa (Maureen Fepuleai) wants him to behave him­self and set a good example to young­er broth­er Solomon (Julian Dennison). He does neither of those things and falls in with a bad crowd of loc­al crims led by cha­ris­mat­ic Bennie (Jacek Koman). In their world “shop­ping” means thiev­ery and the adren­aline, the parties and beau­ti­ful Nicky (Laura Peterson) keep Willie away from his own home and a fam­ily that needs him more than he realises.

[pullquote]I won­der wheth­er the world is ready for a Pakistani James Bond.[/pullquote]Shot with style – and a budget-protecting shal­low focus – by Ginny Loane, Shopping leaves the audi­ence with plenty of work to do – filling in the gaps – until it reaches a suit­ably enig­mat­ic con­clu­sion. Strong per­form­ances from seasoned pros and new­comers alike keep the ten­sion up in indi­vidu­al scenes but I some­times felt that the through-line was no more than a slender thread.

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