Mallamall

East meets West—over the cash register—in Lalita Krishna's documentary Mallamall, which charts efforts to bring Western-style retailing to India. With a fast-growing middle class fueled by young professionals and older expatriates returning to their country after lucrative years abroad, India seems ready to embrace many of the brand labels and consumer standards from North America and Europe—including high-end shopping malls and hypermarkets. Much of the focus here is on the efforts of Toronto-based consulting group Perennial Inc. to import this style of upper-scale retailing to India. But India's overwhelming low-income population cannot possibly afford the merchandise in these new shopping environments, and the centuries-old tradition of the open-air bazaar continues to dominate. Both ends of the spectrum are covered in colorful footage and voiceover narration that is interwoven with the varied perspectives of divergent individuals. Mallamall depicts India as a bifurcated nation, with a smaller and financially secure enclave attracted to the popular culture of the Western world but barely rubbing shoulders with a larger mass of poor people who still need to scrape by to survive. Perhaps not surprisingly, anger against the so-called “corporate stores” and their deleterious impact on the livelihoods of small-business owners has grown, sometimes to the point of violent riots. Providing interesting insights into a culture undergoing a troubled economic evolution, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)