The Blue Tower

Like a benign, cinephile vacuum cleaner, the ICA continues its month-long mission to sweep up the unseen scraps of low-budget British cinema.Writer-director Smita Bhide throws everything at her likeable, muddled anti-hero, Mohan (Abhin Galeya), a thirtysomething British-Asian from Southall whose life is approaching a crossroads. His parents are dead, his wife’s family is overbearing and his ill auntie stores her ample cash in shoeboxes.

Troubled Mohan is caught between the tedium of his ‘balti house’ deadbeat friends and the allure of a local flashboy promising riches, while his auntie’s white nurse is giving him the eye. It all ends up being too much for Bhide, who cashes in some flimsy but lively realism for an increasing number of caricatures and a finale of pure melodrama.