Joyland

 

I know nothing about the Pakistani film industry, absolutely nothing at all, so I was interested to see Siam Sadiq’s gentle and dignified exploration of a family whose lives don’t quite measure up to the ones they wanted for themselves

Wheelchair patriarch Abba ( Palman Peerzada) shares his ramshackle crowded Lahore flat with his two married sons. The elder son ( Sohail Someer) has four daughters and the household is run by his wife (Salwat Gilani) and the gentle younger unemployed brother Haider ( Ali Junejo) whose wife Mumtaz ( Rasti Farooq) has a successful job as a makeup artist. 

This complicated family dynamic is put under strain when Haider eventually finds an unlikely job as a backing dancer to a transgender singer Biba ( Alina Khan) and as the pair embark on an affair each member of Hadier’s family have to reevaluate their lot as life for each one changes from the path of their expectations .

This is a sad, gentle film where tradition and honour are awkward bedfellows with modernity, personal autonomy and fluid sexuality.

It’s beautiful film to look at too, with most of the filmed shot in rich , earthy colours within crowded tenements and theatres ,

But, it’s sadness makes you realise that overly rigid social constraints still feature in some societies much  more than they do in our own