Film

If being on the right side of an issue made for a good movie, Provoked would be sitting pretty; after years of abuse from her husband, Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Rai) finally struck back, dousing the bastard with gas and lighting him on fire. At the time of her trial in 1989, British law did not recognize battered woman syndrome as a condition, and so her defense could not argue provocation, one of the possible extenuating circumstances in a murder. Ahluwalia was sentenced to life in prison. Her case was appealed, and the appellate judges ruled that the original judge’s instructions should have considered her abuse. That ruling altered British law. Cue the welling music.

Alas, Mundhra cues the welling music in every scene, most of which depend upon the hoariest of clichés. People working on her defense discuss her case in a bar, and one innocuous remark leads someone to exclaim roughly, “That’s it! We’ll base our defense on the judge’s instructions!” (The actor, saddled with dialogue that painful, shows admirable restraint by neither snapping his fingers nor slapping his forehead to signal the inspiration.) In the prison sequences we get all the trappings of every women-in-prison movie ever made: menacing fat dyke, fight in the cafeteria, etc. Everything follows the rules of screenwriting, without regard for the realities of life. Ahluwalia’s story is remarkable. This movie is not.