"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare thought so. Gogol Ganguli might disagree.

Gogol: So I'm two inches away from her. Her luscious lips part. Just as I'm about to kiss her, she looks at me and she says, "What's your name?"
Friend: Gogol Ganguli.
Gogol: End of seduction 101.

In director Mira Nair's film The Namesake, an adaptation of the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol struggles to reconcile his American upbringing with his Indian heritage, as well as a name that represents neither and both at the same time.

Kal Penn, currently seen as one of the new fellows on House and best known as the stoner on a quest in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, takes a serious turn in The Namesake while demonstrating the same considerable charm.

Though it's his character referenced in the title of The Namesake, for the first part of the film Gogol is nothing more than the name of his father Ashoke's favourite author, Russian oddball Nikolai Gogol. The movie's core is really the love story between Ashoke and Ashima (a wonderfully warm Irfann Khan and Tabu), whose quiet devotion acts later as a counterpoint to their American son's more expressive romances.

Our first glimpse of Ashoke has him reading the collected stories of Gogol just as the train he's riding in derails. Ashima we meet as a young woman trying on the newly recovered Ashoke's shoes just before the meeting that will lead to her marrying and accompanying this unknown man to New York.

As they get to know each other, their love becomes obvious but unspoken, and we follow them through a span of about 25 years and two children. The Bengali family lives their lives in two countries and two cultures, returning often to the warmth and colour of Calcutta, and lamenting what they've lost in their new life as much as they appreciate what they've gained.

One of the most obvious losses is the gap between their more traditional ideals and their Americanized children's, particularly when Gogol distances himself from his family to the point of rejecting the name that represents the life his father might never have had, after that train wreck. ("We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat," Ashoke quotes.)

His parents had given him the name Gogol as a baby while waiting for inspiration for his proper name, Nikhil. While a five-year-old Gogol decides to keep that nickname, a teenaged Gogol regrets it. So adult Gogol becomes Nick, and Nick becomes a stylish, successful young man becoming part of his rich white girlfriend's parents before ever introducing her to his own.

He doesn't so much want to turn his back on his family or heritage as to be recognized as someone other than simply the product of them. But small, telling moments show that he is not always wholly accepted as a product of the country he was born in, either, and because of that he is in fact a part of both and neither at the same time.