Polite Society’s Stupidest Fight was inspired by a grotesque horror film

Rising teenage stuntwoman Ria (Priya Kansara), the star of polite societyShe has a sane reaction when her family arranges a marriage between her beloved older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) and a sleazy man: Ria wants to thwart the engagement and beat the shit out of the guy.

That might seem like an over-the-top reaction to growing pains, as Ria turns her fear of losing Lena into an excuse for Matrix-style fights. But Lena’s mysterious fiancé Salim (Akshay Khanna) and his imposing mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha) do appear to be up to something nefarious, as Ria and her loyal friends are the only ones who can save Lena from her downfall. Director Nida Manzoor weaves all of this into an action-packed comedy that’s as much about kicking ass as it is about dealing with big life changes.

One of the most brutal fights in the entire film is not between Ria and her enemies, but between Ria and her sister. The confrontation begins as a simple argument between siblings, but eventually escalates to the sisters slamming each other into walls and all the way through a door that disintegrates under the impact. It’s messy, gory, unapologetically brutal, and utterly over the top. (Meanwhile, Ria and Lena’s parents, hanging out downstairs, just sigh and tell them to clean up the debris they left behind.)

Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features

“That was one of my favorite scenes when filming,” Manzoor tells Polygon. “I found it incredibly cathartic to write everything with these two sisters.”

Random objects in Lena’s room become unexpected weapons in battle, from a picture frame to a heated hair straightener. Lena’s children’s room is as much part of the plot of the scene as the two girls, which was particularly important to Manzoor.

“I was also very inspired by Jackie Chan movies,” says Manzoor. “And what he’s doing is really using his environment in a fight. It localizes and grounds a fight scene because he uses parts from the set. That’s why I wanted to have the hair straightener with me. I wanted to have a picture frame with those two there [turned into a weapon], and use the door. It inspired me to ground the fight in its truth.”

For all fights in polite society, Manzoor looked back on her favorite action movie sequences. One scene she kept coming back to was the fight between them Morpheus and Neo in the 1999s The matrix, a scene she says introduced her to the battle against choreographer Woo Ping Yuen and the world of Hong Kong cinema. She also cites Daryl Hannah and Uma Thurman’s showdown in kill Bill Vol 2where they destroy a trailer while trying to take each other out and a scene within haywire where a fight between Gina Carano and Michael Fassbender tears a hotel room apart.

“[Carano] has a true physicality that we often don’t see when women are cast as action heroes. They don’t always feel like they have the physical strength to do the things they do,” says Manzoor. “That inspired me. I wanted my actors to do as many stunts themselves as possible. I wanted them to fully embody those fight sequences and make it feel real to the performer. That was important to me.”

But the fight that really sparked the sister-vs-sister action for Manzoor came from Julia Ducournau’s cannibal horror drama Raw. Genre-wise, the body horror film is very different from the coming-of-age comedy-action vibes of polite societybut both films are about a pair of sisters and the brutality of in Raw‘s sister fight really resonated with Manzoor.

“There’s a brilliant sister fight going on,” she says. “It’s kind of a horror version of it, but they bite each other – they bleed and bite pieces apart. And I remember being like this Wow, I really feel seen in this insanely intense fight. It made me feel like I could keep fighting with my sister.”

polite society is now in cinemas.