Q Triple Bill: Bagdad Cafe (1987 Percy Adlon & co-scr) / Hand In Hand (1961 Philip Leacock) / Bend It Like Beckham (2002 Gurinder Chada & co-scr)

Adlon is rather over-fancy with his technique at the beginning - luckily he calms down as we encounter displaced German Marianne Sagebrecht and how she transforms the lives of the people of the run-down cafe and its customers. CCH Pounder is initially so so mistrustful - after 50 minutes and "Look after your own children" - "I don't have any" - that everything changes.

Boomerang boy / thermos / coffee maker / Moonlight Sonata / a rose.

A celebration of normality, in all its strangeness. With Jack Palance, Christine Kaufmann, Monica Calhoun, Darron Flagg, George Aguilar, G Smokey Campbell, Apesanahkwat.

Written with Elenore Adlon and Christopher Doherty. Photographed (with, one suspects, a variety of filters) by Bernd Heinl; it's in the 'cinéma du look' category.

Killer title track "Calling You" by Bob Telson, performed by Jevetta Steele.

Well, neither of us had even heard of Hand In Hand, a sweet British film told entirely from the points of view of two kids who become best friends, though he's from a Catholic family and she's Jewish. Luckily the Priest and Rabbi have a shared interest in football and get on marvellously. The kids are Loretta Parry (who to Q seemed like a young Billy Piper) and Philip Needs, neither of who made it, the religios are John Gregson and Derek Sydney. Cast also includes Sybil Thorndike, Finlay Currie and Kathleen Byron. It's based on a story by Leopold Atlas and screenwritten by Diana Morgan and produced by Helen Winston. Freddie Young' photography is exquisite (though there is one shot that is noticeably out of focus). Editor Peter Tanner worked on many an Ealing film.

Continuing in a religious vein is Bend It Like Beckham, in which Indian culture and Hindu religion are up against football. Parminda Nagra and Kiera Knightley are the super-obsessed footballers, tutored by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I have never had a stomach that looked as good as Kiera's. She recently admitted that people thought the film would be a failure and she should be embarrassed to be in it, particularly as women's football was not at all big back then, but the film was a huge hit. The two stars were in fact 26 and 16 at the time of filming.

With Archie Panjabi (by no means her debut; she has been acting since 1993 and before this was in East Is East), Anupam Kher, Frank Harper, Juliet Stevenson, Shaheen Khan, Ameet Chana. 

"I swear on Babaji's name!"

Enjoyable stuff. It does, however, suffer from three montages-to-music too may (five in all).