East is East is quite a good little movie but excruciating to watch. It depicts the painful cultural adjustments required of a first generation Pakistani(father)-English(mother)working class family of eight (5 sons and a daughter) in London in the 1960s.
The father periodically threatens his English wife that he will bring wife number one from Pakistan to live with them, and when he arranges a marriage for his eldest son who turns out to be gay, the son bails out at the altar. The father didn't learn from this disaster and attempts to arrange a double wedding for his next two sons who want no part of it.
Through an oversight, for which the husband blames his English wife, the youngest son was not circumsized. The omission was discovered by the local muslim cleric when the lad was around 12 and of course had to be rectified to his mortification and the great amusement of his siblings.
The neighbor across the way is a supporter of Enoch Powell and has a big picture of him in the front window. A soccer ball just happens to be kicked through the window and poster.
I won't reveal the hilarious climax of the movie that occurs when the more bourgeois Pakistani parents come calling with their two butt-ugly daughters who are scheduled to marry the family's two oldest sons.
