Hoylake Community Cinema: The Lunchbox

Indian Rom-Com to Kick-off Cinema’s Fourth Season
Screening of The Lunchbox (PG)
Friday 31 October

Doors open at 6:30 pm; the film starts at 7:30 pm

At The Parade, Hoylake Community Centre, Hoyle Road, Hoylake

Licensed bar and home-made snacks

Tickets cost £5, available online at www.hoylakecommunitycinema.co.uk;
From Urbane, Market Street, Hoylake; Staacks, Banks Road, West Kirby; Toast, Station Approach, West Kirby; The Parade, Hoylake Community Centre, Hoyle Road; or on the door on the night

Hoylake Community Cinema launches its fourth season on 31 October with the screening of the multi-award Indian film The Lunchbox. Cinema spokesman Mark Howard said, “From very humble beginnings we have slowly built up a regular audience, and many of the films shown last season were sell-out occasions. Our strapline is ‘It’s about much more than film’, and the success of our quizzes after the films and the regular praise for the home-made food provided on the night are testament to that. This season we’ll be screening, among others, Goldfinger, Cinema Paradiso, In the Heat of the Night, Saturday Night Fever, and ending the season with all-time favourite Casablanca. Our Christmas special this year is The Nutcracker, performed by the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov). We expect this to be extremely popular, so I would recommend early booking.”

The Lunchbox tells the story of Saajan, a lonely accountant about to retire from his job, and Ila, a young wife seeking her husband’s attention, looking for ways to put romance back in her marriage, and who tries to cook her way to her husband’s heart. A neighbour who lives in the apartment above her gives her advice on cooking and marriage through shouted instructions. Through a rare mix-up of the famous “dabbawalas” (a complicated system that picks up and delivers lunches from restaurants or homes to men at work) of Mumbai, the lunchbox with the delicious food Ila prepared for her husband instead gets delivered to widower Saajan. When the lunch containers are delivered back to Ila empty, she is happy, thinking her husband has enjoyed her cooking. When she questions him, he does not seem to think much of it. Realising the mistake of the delivery, she writes a note to the recipient of her lunch thanking him for enjoying the food and sends him her husband’s favourite meal the following day.

So begins a letter-based romance in the vein of such classics as Shop Around the Corner. But this deceptively simple set-up belies an intelligent, beguiling and understated (no Bollywood songs) drama packed with delicious-looking food and delightful insight. Bolstered with winning performances from veteran actors Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi) and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, first-time director Ritesh Batra has reworked the classic ingredients of the “meet cute” romantic comedy into a disarmingly original concoction to tantalise the taste-buds and warm the heart.

Tickets for The Lunchbox cost £5 and are available from gift shop Urbane, Market Street, Hoylake; Staacks, Banks Road, West Kirby; Toast, Station Approach, West Kirby; The Parade, Hoylake Community Centre; on the door on the night; and online at www.hoylakecommunitycinema.co.uk. Doors open at 6.30 pm; the film starts at 7.30 pm. There is a licensed bar selling homemade snacks. The Parade Community Centre has full disabled access and is induction loop enabled for the hard of hearing.