Nina’s Heavenly Delights

Nina’s Heavenly Delights is, to date, the only WLW movie I’ve seen where at the end of it, the main thing I felt was hunger. Unlike most happy WLW movies, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, did not make me feel a lingering desire for a perfect girlfriend. Instead, I finished the film mostly craving really good curry. The film made me hungrier for curry than it did for women. I’m not if that’s a good or bad thing but there you go.

Nina’s Heavenly Delights follows Nina, who returns to her family in Scotland after the death of her father. After learning that her father’s beloved curry restaurant may be shut down, Nina takes charge to save the restaurant and retake her father’s title as the winner of the best curry house in Scotland. She does this with the help of Lisa. Lisa and Nina are childhood friends but upon Nina’s return, their relationship progresses past friendship.

In a lot of ways Nina’s Heavenly Delights is an almost forgettable, standard rom-com. If it were a straight film, I wouldn’t care about at all. But such is the power of WLW that all tropes are made new and my boredom is erased by the promise of lady kissing. This one of those romantic comedies where I enjoy that it plays out just as a straight romance would. There’s a reason some of the cliches we see in romantic comedies remain popular and that’s because they make us feel good. This is a movie that made me feel good.

Similarly, Nina’s Heavenly Delights is a story of immigrants and people of colour but not drenched in angst. The movie is very specifically a story about Indian immigrants. Nina’s cultural background is important to her and the story. This is a story grounded in Indian immigrant culture that radiates joy rather than sadness. Just as WLW deserve to have happy romantic comedies, so do people of colour and indeed WLW who are people of colour.

Nina’s Heavenly Delights exists at this intersection of minority experiences and yet chooses to tell a happy story rather than a sad one. While there are of course many, many stories of opression and inequality that need to be told, I’m really glad that Nina’s Heavenly Delights is there as an alternative. I can’t speak for people of colour or immigrants but as a WLW, I really appreciate movies that allow me to forget about all the things that might be against me in life and instead depicts a character I can relate to getting a happy ending.

My one major critique of this film is, why was there a ghost? Because there’s briefly a ghost at the end of this movie and that was weird. Honestly, because Nina’s Heavenly Delights was a good but not great film, the brief appearance by a ghost became one of the things I remember most about the movie as it seemed very out of place.

I don’t have much to say about Nina’s Heavenly Delights other than it’s charming. It’s just a small, sweet, well done film. I don’t have any critiques about the story, directing or acting. They all came together to create a perfectly lovely way to spend 90 minutes of my life. Really though, why was there a ghost?

Overall rating: 6.4/10

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