The Stop Button

Polite Society is the story of British-Pakistani teenager Priya Kansara. She goes to an expensive London private girl’s school, where she’s got two best buds—Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri—and a nemesis—Shona Babayemi. Complicating matters is Kansara’s passion for martial arts stunt work. It leads to lots of fighting, which quickly reveals Polite’s major conceit: Kansara’s living in a PG-13 martial arts action movie. Writer and director Manzoor makes no attempt to rationalize this reality, which is otherwise close to our own. It’s just a universe where everyone’s ready to kick ass. And has to kick ass, because there are supervillains.

Not costumed supervillains, just rich people supervillains (see, it’s like reality). They’re not trying to take over the world or, I don’t know, create a clone army, but there’s something very suss about them and Kansara certainly isn’t going to let her big sister, Ritu Arya, marry into that world.

Polite’s opening titles and most of the first act juxtapose Kansara and Arya. Kansara’s trying not to get into too much trouble while still having some self-respect in high school, while Arya’s licking her wounds as an art school dropout. While Kansara’s sure she’ll be a stuntwoman and Arya will be an artist, everyone else assumes Kansara will be a doctor and Arya will be a trophy wife. Including mom Shobu Kapoor, who’s trying to keep up with the Joneses in her friend circle, and unintentionally puts Arya into the crosshairs of queen bee Nimra Bucha.

Bucha’s trying to marry off super-stud son Akshay Khanna, who might charm all the moms and aunts, but Kansara sees right though to the mama’s boy underneath. Unfortunately… Arya doesn’t agree and, after a single date montage, she falls for dreamy Khanna. Act two kicks off with Kansara enlisting Beh and Bruccoleri to help her sabotage the relationship. She’s worried Arya’s not in her right mind (the art school thing) and everyone’s taking advantage of a setback to make her conform. Dad Jeff Mirza actually sums it up for Kansara during a great montage sequence.

But then things get worse—Arya’s buying into the fantasy (Khanna wants to whisk her off to Singapore to live in tropical luxury) while Kansara’s pretty sure it’s actually a nightmare. And then it turns out she’s literally not wrong.

It’s too bad Manzoor didn’t find some way to keep Arya active once she’d detached from Kansara’s plot line, but otherwise, Polite’s basically perfect. It’s funny, it’s got a fount of heart, it’s so smart. Manzoor's a perfectly solid director; she and cinematographer Ashley Connor shoot Panavision ratio, which is fine for the prosumer action movie vibe, but Manzoor’s rarely filling the frame. There’s an iffy effect or two, but they always come with some winning character moment, so it doesn’t matter and sometimes lends to the scene. Manzoor does a phenomenal job using the composite to showcase the performances. And Connor’s photography is good. Great is Robbie Morrison’s cutting. The editing is incredible.

Maybe the neatest thing about Manzoor’s script is the way she foreshadows the very distinct acts; Polite’s got different chapter titles, riffing on Jane Austen novels, and fighting games, but it’s also got major act breaks. They stand out because Kansara, Beh, and especially Bruccoleri examine everything regarding acts. When Kansara’s griping about Arya dating Khanna, Bruccoleri, and Beh explain, it’s just because Arya’s in the second act of her comeback. When it becomes clear the third act isn’t an art show but a wedding, they again discuss it in those terms. Manzoor’s got a really nice way of setting it up, and the self-awareness tips the hand a bit. Foreshadowing for later, more significant moves.

And the other thing about losing track of Arya (sorry, forgot where we were headed; Polite’s so well put-together it’s easy to get lost admiring)—it just means more Kansara, who does get to graduate to a more dangerous nemesis in Bucha, but also gets to have a big character development arc missing Arya.

All the performances are good or better. Kansara’s a charismatic, funny lead, Ayra’s got depth even as she Stepfords (which is such a weird and nice detail—the movie makes that comparison in scene), Khanna's a charming science stud and mama’s boy, and Bucha’s a fantastic baddie. Then the supporting cast—Kapoor, Mirza, Beh, Bruccoleri, and Babayemi—are all delightful. The more Polite asks of its cast, the more they deliver.

Polite Society’s badass.