Inspired by her spelling bee victory, writer-producer and director Sujata Day’s feature film, Definition Please, centers around former National Spelling Bee champion now college grad Monica Chowdry.
Sometimes a movie serendipitously falls into your life, and it just is everything you didn’t know you needed. That’s how I feel about Definition Please.
Monica Chowdry, a former National Spelling Bee champ, is currently experiencing a cruel uneasiness period— Feeling stuck in life. Still living at home with her mother, Monica is now tutoring the next generation of future spelling bee champs in her hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
The instant connection to this film is organic; it resonants right away, nailing the hazy post-collegiate era of life when you’re not sure what you’re doing. Monica Chowdry is no exception.
Despite Monica’s rising spelling bee star power, her route didn’t quite go how it’s expected of her. Monica’s path changes due to being her ill mother’s (The Good Place‘s Anna Khaja) caretaker. Just as Monica adjusts to her complacent life, once again, her life changes.
Her estranged brother Sonny (Russian Doll‘s Ritesh Rajan) is back from living in California for their fathers’ one year memorial of his passing. What follows next is a charming expedition that neither expected from the other.
Definition Please is an amalgam (insert Monica Chowdry voice there) around the refreshing female gaze, inverting the male fantasy in cinema. Incorporating brilliant film elements like Bollywood, coming-of-age, and indie of the early aughts.
Along with the challenging intermix of living within two cultures, which can be overwhelming. Definition Please honors the beauty of Day’s South Asian culture, honoring tradition yet featuring a bit more modern-day female empowerment.
Not only that, but Day also features an often difficult subject that plays a key role in Monica’s new journey. Mental illness, more specifically, Monica’s brother’s bipolar disorder.
Removing the stigma and cartoonish sensationalism that mental illnesses usually have, Day writes Sonny’s character with a wistful nuance. Ritesh Rajan captures the hardship within one’s self and having bipolar disorder. It’s a strong desire to not let our mental health define us yet knowing when we’re struggling.
Not to mention that mental illness depiction within one’s culture can be enigmatic, Day gives viewers what we deserve; an honest portrayal.
This is what’s so wonderful with new generations of filmmakers and screenwriters. Ironically, we aren’t more conservative as we’ve gotten older, as our parents would tell us. We’re more progressive and radicalized; therefore, taboo subjects are no longer silenced, and representation will grow, especially in film.
Day’s ability to capture that along with a raw poignancy in her feature debut makes Definition Please more endearing. In addition to the moments of familial and intergenerational trauma that hit a bit too close to home for me, yet it’s what makes the film evocative.
Day’s Definition Please is her contribution to open a dialogue within her community, just as her inspirers did for her.
