Peepli [live]

Peepli [Live], a female Indian writer-director's debut feature, was criticised by some Indians for showing too much European influence. They might suspect that its tragi-comic satirical tone was inspired by post-Communist (especially Romanian) movies, but it would be unsurprising if Anusha Rizvi hadn't learned lessons from watching bitter-sweet European fables about oppressed people. There may not have been many equivalent stories produced in Bollywood for her to study.

Her concept is a well-detailed set of black-comic set pieces satirising India's politics, mass media, caste system and urbanisation. There's wit and slapstick, and only two on-screen singing scenes (both apropos), the handsome male lead and bewitching female star do not have a romance, and the ending is far from happy, all very non-Indian.

A bank is foreclosing on two boozy farming brothers, and seek a loan from local headmen. Instead, they are told that the government is donating the level of funds they need to the families of farmers who commit suicide. The lazy unmarried brother thinks it'll be best if his malleable, married and equally lazy hen-picked sibling with two children saves the family. Their bed-ridden harridan of a mother, whose medical costs helped achieve the financial ruin, blames the son's bitter shrew of a wife.

A local news stringer overhears the brothers' suicide plan and passes the story to an English-language TV news station, whose lead reader-reporter he worships. Meanwhile, a local politician is setting up a by-election in the village area (the Peepli of the title), which eventually involves a handful of different political campaigns and intrigues urging the confused would-be suicide to carry out his suicide, or not, to suit their electoral plans. If not, he'll be killed, and there'll be no government compensation for the family.

Simultaneously, a fleet of rival TV stations news teams have set up camp in the village, trying to get an exclusive interview with the suicidal bumpkin. Armed forces then have to be billeted, to protect the villager, which is only a problem because the farmer has a weak bladder, and major comic chaos caused when he gets the chance to have an unescorted crap. Only at that point did the screenplay lose its cool, in a scene when a TV station provides live commentary on the social condition of his faeces.

It's impossible to admire any of the well-acted characters. The rustic brothers are not presented as virtuous noble savages, but neither are the villains truly evil. The one kind soul in the whole story dies, like the villager who digs up earth for a living, trundles his bicycle through all the chaos, and dies at the bottom of his own pit - a bitter symbol of the whole political charade.

The movie, produced by actor and industry veteran Aamir Khan (Lagaan and much more), was India's entry for the 2011 Foreign Picture Oscar. It wasn't short-listed. It was nominated at Sundance (where it was the first invited Indian feature) and the Asian Film Awards, and deserves to win something significant, other than a good calling card for its creator.