But the film also uses football to navigate other coming-of-age themes including sexuality, with Jess' best friend Tony coming out to her by saying: "No, I really like Beckham. Gurinder Chadha co-wrote the script with Guljit Bindra and screenwriting partner Paul Mayeda Berges. On the surface, Bend It Like Beckham is a film about a football-loving teenager from a British-Indian Sikh family in London.

Juliet Stevenson and Frank Harper joined as Paula Paxton and Alan Paxton, mother and father of Jules.million in US box office revenue, [28] Bend It Like Beckham became the highest-grossing Indian-themed film in the United States [29] since Gandhi (1982). She has also trod the boards in the West End and on Broadway with productions of The Misanthrope, The Children’s Hour and Thérèse Raquin. Having previously worked with Road Movies, a German production company on several other projects, Nayar approached them and they came on board, followed by British Screen and The Film Council.

The two almost kiss, but Jess pulls away, saying her parents would object, and that although they had come far enough to let her go to America to play, she doesn't think they would be able to handle another cultural rebellion from her. Appearing as Jess’s firm but ultimately fair cricket-loving dad, Mohaan Singh Bhamra, Kher is a prolific actor who has appeared in over 500 films, predominantly in Hindi. The film is all of these things, with sophisticated subplots, (almost) perfect casting, one of the greatest movie soundtracks of all time and a climactic final sequence that juxtaposes the beauty of a traditional Punjabi wedding with the joy of winning a football final. Although Jess's parents (mainly her mother) forbid her to join the team, she plays behind their backs, claiming to have a part-time job when she is actually at football practice.

Beckham went on to play for Real Madrid, LA Galaxy, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain, stepping down as England captain in 2006. When I walked out of the cinema after watching Bend It Like Beckham for the first time (on my 12th birthday), I experienced something I couldn’t properly articulate until much later. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was the object of many girls’ fantasies as sympathetic Irish football coach Joe, who finds himself falling for Jess even as he is tough on her, pushing her to fulfil the dreams he missed out on due to injury. Okay, so Beckham never actually made an appearance in the film, save for archive footage, but it was imbued with his spirit and skill, as shown by the focus on Jess’s goal to, indeed, bend it like Beckham (which she did).