Netflix’s ‘Wedding Season’ Revives The Rom-Com With A South Asian Twist
"It employs the tropes of a rom-com, but in a different cultural milieu to what we're used to."
The new Netflix movie Wedding Season explores how old South Asian traditions play out in modern dating culture.
Indian-Australian actress Pallavi Sharda has had a global career, spanning India, Australia, the UK and the US. In her latest film, the Netflix romantic comedy Wedding Season, her and co-star Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi) traverse the complicated sport of modern dating among the invasive but well-meaning expectations of their parents.
Despite her success, Sharda never thought she could be the lead in a Hollywood film.
“Australia is good at encouraging aspiration, but these dreams should be allowed to flourish beyond the classroom,” she tells Junkee. “Being brown, [there has] been a caveat to how much I can aspire to.”
A Traditional Take On Modern Dating
In Wedding Season, Sharda plays Asha, a career-driven woman who leaves a lucrative banking career to move into microfinance. The one thing missing according to her parents? A husband. After a failed engagement, her parents set up a fake dating profile, through which she meets Ravi a MIT drop out turned international DJ, whose parents undertake a similar ploy. What unfolds is a cultural exploration facilitated through a familiar trope.
“Though it’s about much more than this, Wedding Season breaks down the stigma of what an arranged marriage looks like in diasporic communities today – it’s basically an introduction,” says Sharda.
Introductions are like blind dates, with matches often being found through friends and community, and at times, requiring vetting and pre-approval by parents. Should the match be a hit, an expedient courtship process takes place, followed by marriage. This approach, still present today, is also profiled in the popular Netflix show Indian Matchmaking.
Long before dating apps entered the western world, South Asian communities had been using online websites to find suitable partners, including shaadi.com, tamilmatrimony.com and singlemuslim.com. In particular, these websites aided subsets of the community that had particular requirements on region, language, religion, education, and profession.
“A biodata is like a resume but for dating — kind of like Hinge, but your parents do it for you. Like Asha [in Wedding Season], I would be pretty bummed if this was happening without my approval!” says Sharda.
A South Asian Twist On The Rom-Com
A recent trend we’re seeing on screen is to apply a non-dominant lens to formulaic narratives in an effort to diversify stories.
“Other Netflix shows such as Bridgerton and Never Have I Ever go a long way to connecting people to the experiences of a migrant family and normalising their experience instead of ‘othering’ them,” says Sharda.
Romantic comedies, affectionately termed rom-coms, were notorious in the 1990s and early 2000s, from When Harry Met Sally and Bridget Jones’ Diary to 10 Things I Hate About You. What enabled their prevalence was how they centred the universal desire to be loved, and the blending of fantasy contextualised in everyday life.
What also bonded the Hollywood films during this era were the white, heterosexual storylines that shot actors like Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon, and Cameron Diaz to prominence. Despite the predictable storylines, the genre is experiencing something of a resurgence, recapturing the familiar relationship dynamics and obstacles, while also redressing underrepresentation of minorities in Western cinema.
Like the box office hit Crazy Rich Asians and even more recently, Joel Kim Booster’s queer Pride and Prejudice adaptation Fire Island, the shift is not tokenistic; often the lead cast or lead couple are from a minority group that had previously been sidelined. According to Sharda, Wedding Season joins this new wave of rom-coms.
“Wedding Season employs the tropes of a rom-com, but it’s situated in a different cultural milieu to what we’re used to — it’s both unique and universal which is why I think the audiences are loving it,” she says.
Representation, though, needs to be about more than visibility: it’s the subtleties infused in dialogue, story arcs, and character development that enables these films to feel authentic and draw audiences in. In Wedding Season, the friction and shame stemming from community and familial expectations for introduced, interracial and inter-religious unions, means it’s not always easy to “keep calm and curry on”. (Though Asha’s brother-in-law’s well-intentioned attempts to adopt South Asian customs did provide good comedic fodder.)
“Cultural consultants and script advisors are important to bridging the cultural divide, to go from diversity optics to diversity actualisation,” says Sharda.
“In a sense there is a very strong co-facilitation with dual heritage, but it’s invisible. I hope people recognise me as Indian-Australian in the film. My lived experience impacts the work I do in each territory and that’s not always obvious.”
Paving A Path For Future Stories
For actors that sit outside of the archetypal white bronzed aesthetic exemplified by Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie, the pathway to a local or international career is not linear. For Sharda, she knew she wanted to be in the business of telling stories, and Bollywood came knocking before the local industry recognised her talent.
There is a however a growing cohort of local talent making their mark in the US, including Geraldine Viswanathan (Miracle Workers), Aisha Dee (The Bold Type), Charlotte Nicdao (Mythic Quest), Madeleine Madden (The Wheel of Time), Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians), Jordan Rodrigues (Lady Bird), and Ronnie Chieng (The Daily Show).
“There are so many actors coming out of Australia to Hollywood right now; [but] the pathway to make it in America from Australia was unavailable to non-white actors for a very long time,” Sharda stresses.
“I have pushed through number of ceilings and had many difficult conversations as a young brown woman and actress. I hope that my convoluted journey provides a pathway for those who want to pursue a career the arts.”
Since working in Bollywood, Sharda has added a number of credits to her name, including Gurinder Chadha’s Beecham House, live action animated series Tom & Jerry: The Movie and locally-produced Foxtel drama The Twelve.
“To be one of the few South Asian women foraying into the field; I had to rely on my intuition, faith and experience. While it was tough going, I do feel lucky that my journey in India prepared me for any future challenges,” Sharda explains.
The opportunity that comes with Sharda’s global experience, as well as working on culturally specific material, is the skills and experience to influence practices in the local industry when it comes to working with a diverse cast as well as bringing nuance to South Asian roles and depictions.
In the last 10 years, there have been films that have used the romantic comedy trope as a vehicle for exploring culture, including Osamah Sami’s Ali’s Wedding, Miranda Tapsell’s Top End Wedding, as well as UnIndian, starring Sharda herself.
With staple shows like Neighbours having come to an end, and the plethora of streaming services looking to invest in locally-produced content, there is room to make content that showcases Australia as it actually is.
“I’m glad I get to give voice to what it means to be a global South Asian woman and break down the stereotypes that exist,” Sharda says. “Each role pushes that a little further.”
Wedding Season is streaming on Netflix now.
Vyshnavee Wijekumar is a freelance writer and culture critic. She is on the board of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival and is a fortnightly film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters. She was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and has lived in this country since the age of two. You can follow her on Twitter @vylentfemme.