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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
Exploring marriages from interracial to interfaith in the rom-com diaspora of the modern-day British-Pakistani identity.
Jemima
Khan’s massively promoted 2022 British rom-com directed by Shekhar Kapur, What’s
Love Got to Do it? stars Lily James, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi, Emma
Thompson, Sajal Aly, and many others with a surprise cameo of Pakistan’s
beloved musical genius, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
Dealing with
issues of arranged marriage in the modern age coining the term ‘Love
Contractually’, the movie has a promising start and a hopeful future preaching to the youth to stop pretending in unhappy or ‘insisted marriages’ as the male
lead portrayed by Shazad Latif says to his parents.
On the
surface, the film deals with protagonist Kazim Khan’s journey from deciding to
look for a bride to actually marrying a young Pakistani Muslim girl with whom he
shares a sense of compatibility.
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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
What’s
Love Got to Do it? starts
with British-born Pakistani doctor Kazim Khan giving a nod of approval to his
parents so they can begin hunting for the ideal daughter-in-law. In their
endeavors, they turn to a local matchmaking bureau where Kazim gets to meet potential
matches, but nothing comes of it. On the other hand, his British childhood
friend and neighbour played by Lily James is now an award-winning documentary
filmmaker going through a rough patch. Despite winning awards for previous
projects, she has trouble getting her ideas approved so when an opportunity
presents itself, Zoe decides to document the rishta process in turn getting a lesson
in love herself.
As a young
aspiring woman disillusioned with the fairy-tale versions of love, she
questions her hookups with the potential upcoming marriage of her friend Dr. Kazim.
Him attempting to understand the complexities of entering into matrimony and
eventually finding love, “Whatever in love means” – a statement famously quoted
by King Charles III upon his engagement to the people’s princess, Lady Diana.
Though the underlined meaning isn’t missing, the cheeky nod to the former Royal
couple given their public breakup, cannot go unnoticed by even the most novice
of viewers.
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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
Bringing
with it the cliches of rom-coms, we find the characters in a love triangle unbeknownst
to both the lead characters, always circling back to each other under the guise
of a considerate “friend” divided by “continents” – a reference to their identities
and cultural differences of the colonizer/colonized in the past, and strains of
terrorism in the current day and age. Yet another cliché, is their failure to
understand the things left unsaid. A contrast to this relationship is that of Kazim
and Maymouna, the demure, soft-spoken, shy Pakistani girl from a conservatively-modern
family or so it seems upon introduction. Maymouna played by Pakistani actor
Sajal Aly is a 22-year-old law student who is entering into an “assisted” marriage
with Kazim, with secrets of her own.
Speaking
with Geo News earlier this year, Jemima Khan said, “I wanted to show the
colourful, beautiful, joyful place that I knew when I was in Pakistan”. Khan who
is the ex-wife of former Prime Minister, Imran Khan briefly lived in Pakistan during
the course of their marriage so she has a better understanding of the community
than most other westerners.
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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
In her interview
with Geo, Khan who wrote the film said that during her time in Pakistan, she was
able to learn the importance of “neat” (intention) and hoped that her intention
behind the film could transcend boundaries for Pakistanis so we can see that
she wishes to portray us as “normal people and not scary creatures” (a reference
to the western notion of a country harbouring terrorists).
Despite
these positives, what stood out most in the writing, sometimes witty and often
forced, was the incorporation of little anecdotes of cultural expression. Thomspson’s
portrayal of Zoe’s mother, for instance, wholeheartedly embraces the cultural
and linguistic heritage of her Pakistani, Muslim neighbours. Watching Thompson
on screen as the joyful British lady was a treat. Her character is eager to use
the little tidbits of language she has acquired from her interactions with the
family next door, saying things like “shabash” (well done), or assalam-o-alaikum
(the Islamic form of greeting meaning ‘peace be upon you’) and others were
truly endearing.
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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
The film
also tackles the idea of interfaith marriages, through the character of Kazim’s
sister Jamila who is disowned by the family for marrying a non-Muslim man. A
bold move on Khan’s part to incorporate such a relationship considering that in
Islam, it is not permissible for women to marry a man from a faith other than
Islam. And also, one that will not sit well with many. As a woman myself from a
conservative Pakistani Muslim family, this was a point I felt the film could have
done without.
Coming back
to Kazim and Maymouna’s marriage though, the couple enters into an arranged marriage
with the typical spices taken to make a perfect exotic union, yet they hit a
rough patch early on when Maymouna’s behaviour at the mehndi event unfolds
another shade to her character predicting a much-awaited twist in the story – that
of a secret lover.
Once
Maymouna moves to London with her new husband, she is forced to reveal that she
is unhappy in this marriage not because there is no compatibility but because
her heart belongs to another bringing the film to the point Khan hoped to make –
can marriages of pretense survive? When Kazim reads an exchange of messages on
Maymouna’s phone, he questions “What do we do now?” and she responds, “we
pretend”.
Thus, setting
the tone for the 21st-century diaspora of a Pakistani-British identity
intermingling religion with culture and roots. Khan sets the tone that more
young people can choose to quit arranged marriages if they are more inclined to
the “insisted” rather than “assisted” stratosphere of couples made in heaven (an old saying). On
a whole, the film felt a little flat to me as it failed to elicit any significant
emotion from fellow moviegoers, with barely any laughter or reaction. Nonetheless, a
way forward to a positive representation of the Pakistani community in a sea of “misunderstood”
opinions.
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| ©The Sanniah Experience! (TSE) |
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