Brother-and-sister filmmakers Ravi and Geeta Patel have made one of the best romantic comedies in years — except it’s a real-life documentary about their family. Fresh from a breakup with his secret white girlfriend that his parents knew nothing about, Indian-American Ravi Patel goes on a family vacation to India and begins to think his parents, the product of an arranged marriage, may be on to something. In Ravi and Geeta’s famly, everyone has the same last name — Patels tend to marry other Patels. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that they’re marrying cousins, it’s just that many prefer to end up with people who are descended from the same 50-square mile radius in India. Struck with how happy the marriages are of his Patel family, Ravi enters the Patel matchmaking system, much to his parents’ joy, and embarks on a worldwide search for the perfect Patel woman.
A well-oiled machine, the Patel network is instantly alerted of Ravi’s availability through his legendary matchmaker mother and his life-advice-spouting father, both of whom expertly quarterback Ravi’s love life, all documented by Ravi’s sister, Geeta, who is desperately trying to stay off her family’s radar. Over the course of a year, Ravi’s parents send him on a whirlwind of dates around the United States via one-page dating resumes, online matrimonial websites, and the “Patel Matrimonial Convention.” Witty and brutally honest, this comedy explores the eternal question: What is love and how the heck do we find it in this day and age? Meet the Patels is a heartwarming film that everyone can relate to regardless of gender, age, or cultural background. I recently talked to Ravi and Geeta Patel about their crowd-pleasing documentary that has already won several awards at film festivals around the country.
Danny Miller: Were you surprised by how many groups other than Indians deeply relate to this film? I’m Jewish and at times it felt like I was watching my own family members!
Ravi Patel: Yeah, that has been an awesome surprise. Our Jewish friends are going crazy over this movie — we all have the exact same mom!
Yes, except yours is making much better food.
(Laughs.) In the end, this is a movie about family and about finding love — I guess everyone relates to that in some way.
Your parents are such wonderful characters in the film, I totally fell in love with them. Were they worried about how they might be portrayed?
They were really cool throughout the filmmaking process. Geeta and I put a lot of thought into making sure everyone in the film was portrayed with love. These are all good people who want the same things for us that we want — even if they have a very different plan about how to get there than we do!
Geeta Patel: We were terrified when we showed our parents the finished film for the first time. They came over to watch it where Ravi and I were living. They were in the living room with the door closed and we were in the kitchen with our ears up against the door! We were so scared they’d be upset, especially mom. We walked into the room after it was done — it was dark and they were very quiet so we approached them and as we got closer they threw out their arms and said, “We love it, how did you do this!” My mom’s only critical comment was, “If I knew you were filming, I wouldn’t have worn such crappy clothes, I would have put a Sari on!”
There are some very emotional scenes in the film where we really see your mother’s pain and vulnerability. Did you worry about including such raw moments?
Ravi: Those are important points in the story that we knew we had to include. But there were times when we didn’t want to have the camera in our parents’ faces because they were having a really hard time so that’s where the animation comes from.
I love those animated scenes, they add such a nice touch.
It look a long time before we decided on that. There was one version of the movie where I would do these little Seinfeld-like stand-up bits, another where I told stories like Woody Allen, and another where I was using a talk show format!
My great-grandparents had an arranged marriage in Poland before they came here and they were very happy together for over 70 years. I’m not saying that I would want my family members to choose my spouse for me, God knows, but I don’t completely discount that way of finding a spouse either.
You know, I talked to a lot of relationship experts in the course of making this film. One of them told me that there were three pillars to a relationship. In this country, people tend to put most of their attention on the first pillar, which is chemistry and love. In my parents’ culture, the attention is more on the latter two which are commitment and compatibility. For us first-generation Americans, we were raised in our parents’ home but we grew up watching all of these American romantic comedies so we’re all a little confused! The bottom line is that I think a balance of all three pillars is really important in any relationship.
Geeta: The interesting thing about making this film and thinking about all of our family members who got married through the traditional matchmaking process is that there’s really a lot more romance in that than you’d think. I mean, look at this country — we have the highest divorce rate ever and we are in a total crisis with more and more people choosing to be alone because it just seems too hard to find the right person. We write off these traditional communities and the way they go about finding love, but they may be on to something! There may be things we can learn even though our tendency now is to reject any such interference from our families.
Did you have any fears of how the film would be received by the Indian community?
Ravi: All of the Indians we know have been very supportive. The whole idea for it started years ago when I was an MC at this event for Indian lawyers and I did a 10-minute bit about the pressure my parents were putting on me to get married and how they wanted to set me up with all these Indian women so they were gathering all of these pictures and resumes. People were dying laughing because they could all relate, they’d all been through it in their own families.
Geeta: The Indian community loves this film and now they’re even helping us promote it. Being a pretty small film, we don’t have much of an outside marketing budget and our dad was like, “Oh, that is unacceptable.” So he printed a thousand yard signs and he is traveling around to all the cities where the film is playing and getting the Indian community to help out and put up all his signs!
I’m glad that they all see what an affectionate portrait this is of your family and your community.
A lot of times when you see movies covering these issues, especially any differences between traditional and modern ways, you see people from the communities made into caricatures — I’m sure this happens with movies about Jewish families, too. It’s always played for laughs and the people are not really taken seriously. We wanted to depict our family and our culture in a more truthful way. I think the Indian community is excited that the film isn’t turning them into jokes.
In Jewish culture, and I’m guessing Indian culture is the same way, the pressure on women to get married is even more pronounced. But this film clearly focuses on Ravi’s journey, not yours, Geeta. I assume that was a deliberate decision on your parts?
Ravi: We spent a lot of time thinking about how to reveal Geeta’s story and even how we reveal her face! She has a very interesting character arc in the film. You see this very close relationship between siblings but you only later learn that she’s going through a lot of the same stuff herself.
Geeta: When we started making the film, I had just finished this intense documentary that I made in a war zone and I was exhausted. I had already gone through a lot of the things that Ravi goes through in the film and I was adamant that I didn’t want to be in the film at all. But as we were making it, it became clear that the conversations Ravi and I were having were an important part of the story and more compelling than any intellectual discussions with relationship experts. My own story started seeping out more and more in the film and it did end up being a bit cathartic for me. This was a film about our family, myself included!
Had your parents really given up on you in terms of finding a nice Indian guy?
Kind of! I remember wondering if it was better that they were finally leaving me alone, as much as I thought I wanted them to. Which made me feel worse — them getting involved in my love life or giving up on it? (Laughs.)
I’m very close to my sister and think it would be a blast to work on such a personal project together about our family. But also very challenging. For one thing, every time I talk about something that happened in our childhood, my sister says, “That never happened! You have it all wrong.” It drives me nuts.
Ha, Ravi and I are exactly the same way! We have completely different perspectives on everything. Our parents were very worried about us during the making of the film. There was a point when we weren’t getting along at all — we were driving each other crazy about everything. We made each other cry on numerous occasions! But then, because we couldn’t fire each other, we took a deep breath and just worked at loving each other harder. It didn’t happen overnight, but this film totally changed us. We have such an incredible relationship now.
Ravi: We are closer today than we could have ever imagined being. Making a movie with a family member forces you to love each other — after going through the process of hating each other! Geeta and I are best friends now and our whole family is closer. It’s been such a great process to experience this film as a family.