Comedies about brides with cold feet predictably vindicate the women’s doubts. Here more doubts than usual might seem justified: the marriage is arranged, and the groom is an American stranger arriving in New Delhi just days before the ceremony. But director Mira Nair makes you want the couple to hash things out before it’s too late—it helps that they’re a gorgeous pair and frank about the past. This 2002 feature never quite descends into making cute, thanks to the collision of ritualistic chastity and Nokia-armed sexual liberation. A late radical shift in tone, from jittery exuberance to ruinous alienation, strikes an impressive contemporary note amid all the obeisance to custom. In English and subtitled Hindi and Punjabi. R, 113 min.
