Starring: Lily James, Shazad Latif, Nosheen Phoenix, and Emma Thomson
Distributor: StudioCanal
Runtime: 109 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2023
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This British film is a romantic comedy that contrasts the approaches to love and marriage of Pakistani and Western cultures.
This romantic film is directed from a screenplay written by Jemima Khan, and comes from the makers of Four Weddings and a Funeral. The movie depicts the attempts by Zoe (James), an award-winning documentary filmmaker, to document the journey of her childhood’s best friend and neighbour, Kazim (Latif) toward an arranged marriage.
Kazim chooses to follow the example of his parents and opts for an assisted marriage to a bright and beautiful girl from Pakistan (Phoenix), who is chosen by his parents. He is a doctor, and she is a lawyer. The film steers clear from a deep analysis of what assisted marriages mean. Rather, it skims the surface of arranged marriages, and chooses to probe a little thinly on the complexity of the issues that it raises.
The film itself shouldn’t be confused with a 1993 movie of the same name that depicts the turbulent past of singer, Tina Turner, who married an abusive, alcoholic husband.
Assisted marriages are frequently depicted in films such as Monsoon Wedding (2001), and they often show romantic love successfully competing with marital ‘arrangements’. Such films are nearly always directed to show social progress gaining the upper hand over tradition. This film doesn’t fall into the trap of painting arranged marriage as outdated, and tries to be even-handed. Zoe sets her detailed plans for documentary film action after discussion with Kazim and her extraverted mother, Cath (Thomson). Zoe and Cath live in an ethnically diverse part of London, which comfortably embraces multicultural engagement, something they obviously enjoy.
James and Latif achieve good chemistry together. The attractive couple at the centre of the planned marriage have surprisingly little to do with each other, however, and Thomson tries to steal every scene she is in by injecting infectious humour into the drama that is unfolding – and mostly manages to succeed. In the film, sets and costuming are eye-catching and production design is impressive. The director, Shekhar Kapur, born in Lahore, has an excellent eye for colour and uses it well to project the vibrancy of cultural life in Pakistan, but the film’s script disappoints.
While it offers colourful delights, it examines assisted marriages in a visual, rather than conceptual way. The problem is that it embeds Pakistani culture into a white person’s narrative. Kazim follows his parents’ example, but his arranged marriage is largely viewed through the eyes of Zoe, a white film maker, and the film follows a script written through the same lens. In the movie, we learn little about how racial identity is affected by marriages from different cultural backgrounds.
The film shifts effortlessly between London and Lahore, and love, friendship, family, and cultural traditions mingle together in contrasting scenarios, but the film nearly always puts what happens under white gaze. As a consequence, it struggles to find a happy medium between tradition and western approaches to marriage.
The film’s title appears to provocatively suggest, ‘love’ predictably triumphs. The title raises a meaningful question about the relevance of ‘love’ to human happiness and appears to ask for thoughtful explanation to the question that it raises. The film delivers visual delights en route to a sentimental finish, but ultimately fails to provide a convincing response to the complex concerns or issues that can accompany arranged, or assisted marriages.
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