Bend It Like Beckham follows Jess Bhamra, an 18-year-old in London who can strike a ball better than most of the boys she plays with. She idolises David Beckham to the point of having a shrine of newspaper clippings on her bedroom wall, but despite that, her protective parents have firmly ruled out football as a career path for their daughter.
Enter Jules, a fellow footballer who spots Jess' talent whilst on a jog and convinces her to try out for the local women's team, the Hounslow Harriers. Of course, her trial is successful and just like that Jess has a double life: model daughter by day, chasing her dreams by evening, with an increasingly creative set of excuses to cover the gap.
The film is really about two parallel pressures. Jess is trying to carve out space for something her parents don't yet understand, while her sister Pinky is steaming ahead with an enormous, very traditional wedding that the whole family is immersed in. Jess sneaks off to training, falls for her coach, very nearly loses her best friend over it when Jules catches them together, and somehow still ends up in the running for the league final, all while the Bhamra household spirals deeper into wedding planning chaos.
The cast is perfect, with Parminder Nagra playing Jess with total conviction, equal parts stubborn and quietly terrified of disappointing her parents. A young Keira Knightley is clearly having the time of her life as Jules, all elbows and enthusiasm. And Anupam Kher's performance as Jess' father gives the film its real heart. He's not the overbearing obstacle he first appears to be; he's a man who was kept out of a cricket club once for being Indian, and is trying, badly but sincerely, to protect his daughter from the same pain.
And so we come to the final. The Harriers game clashes directly with Pinky's wedding, because of course it does, and for a while it looks like Jess will miss her opportunity entirely. Down 1-0 with half an hour left, she gets her chance, a free kick, the wall of defenders lined up exactly the way Beckham would have faced them, and spoiler alert, she bends it round them and right in.
Whilst Bend It Like Beckham is a charming, entertaining, and easygoing watch, it also runs much deeper than that. There's Tony, Jess' best friend, quietly working out how to be gay in a community that hasn’t much space for it yet. There's a women's football team fighting for pitch time and respect years before the sport had anything like its current following. And there's Jess herself, trying to be both the daughter her parents raised and the footballer she's becoming, without having to choose one over the other. It is substance dressed up as style, and arguably a film that was having conversations the mainstream hadn't caught up to yet.
So, while you have a couple of hours waiting for the next match to kick off, why not revisit this modern football classic? And if you're looking for somewhere to watch the games this summer, minus secret training sessions and family drama, we've got you covered. Catch the tournament in our lounges; comfy sofas, snacks, drinks and good vibes are, of course, always available.
