Directed by Deepa Mehta. Starring Preity Zinta and Vansh Bhardwaj. In English and Punjabi with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, October 31, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

When sweet-natured Chand, played by Bollywood's Preity Zinta (also seen in the current Bollywood film Heroes), gives up a rich family life in India, it looks like a valuable, if scary, step toward new possibilities in Canada. Indeed, her parents seem to have picked a promising husband in the westernized Rocky (impressive newcomer Vansh Bhardwaj), whose own extended brood in suburban Brampton, Ontario, is initially quite welcoming.

Once Chand is tucked away in their suburban special, however, and working a sweatshop job for which the paycheque goes straight to hubby, she is increasingly ill-treated. He has a sensitive, handsome face, but Rocky turns out to be a brooding mama's boy, and with a mama like this in-house dragon (Balinder Johal), you can almost understand his ambivalence. In fact, Chand is just another burden to him, and he ends up more prepared to slap her around than consummate their marriage.

The scenes of conjugal brutality are rough, if not especially graphic. What's more disturbing is the casual way this violence is accepted by the members of the extended family. Youngsters appear helpless, if quietly traumatized, while the elders either want to avoid interfering with "private matters" or somehow benefit from the upheaval.

Writer-director Deepa Mehta plays it straighter here than in her previous few outings (such as the well-received Water), although not to the point of docudrama grittiness. She makes some mystifying visual choices, mainly in switching to black-and-white sequences in no discernible pattern. And Chand's recitation of a childhood myth involving a wise cobra is a little tedious-until the hooded snake manifests itself in her adult life and this Earth becomes a more intriguingly complicated place.