Anita and Me (film) Anita and Me (film) Anita and Me is a British comedy-drama film released in 2002 based on the book of the same name by Meera Syal. It was released during a period of popularity for British Asian films, alongside such as "East Is East" and "Bend It Like Beckham". Meena Kumar, a 12-year-old Sikh girl, lives with her family in the predominantly white, working-class, fictional mining village of Tollington in the Black Country in 1972. Meena meets Anita, a white, 14-year-old girl whom Meena comes to idolise. However, Meena finds it harder and harder to fit in as her Indian
It girl film was planned as a special showcase for its popular star Clara Bow, and her spectacular performance introduced the term "It" to the cultural lexicon. The film plays with the notion that "It" is a quality which eschews definitions and categories; consequently, the girl portrayed by Bow is an amalgam of an ingenue and a femme fatale, with a touch of Madonna's latter day "Material Girl" incarnation. By contrast, Bow's rival in the script is equally young and comely (and rich and well-bred to boot), yet she doesn't have "It". Since the 1990s, "It Girl" or "It-Girl" has been used