‘Love’ Me Not
Shekhar Kapur’s Pakistani-centred rom-com could do with some Elizabethan fire, or maybe some banditry.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Director: Shekhar Kapur • Writer: Jemima Khan
Starring: Lily James, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi, Emma Thompson, Sajal Aly, Oliver Chris, Jeff Mirza, Pakiza Baig, Alice Orr-Ewing, Asim Chaudhry
UK • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong April 13 • IIA
Grade: C+
In What’s Love Got to Do with It? (which has absolutely nothing to do with the Tina Turner biopic) young doctor Kaz Khan (Shazad Latif, the Klingon sleeper agent on Star Trek: Discovery) decides to honour his Pakistani heritage and seek an arranged marriage in the age of Tinder, much to the delight of his traditional mother Aisha (veteran Shabana Azmi, City of Joy, Halo) and modest confusion of his childhood chum Zoe (Lily James, Baby Driver). They grew up next door to each other, at 47 and 49 whatever street, yet a continent apart. He sneaks smokes with her. They were each other’s first kiss. I don’t need to say more about their fate, do I? It’a a rom-com.
At first glance, Shekhar Kapur hardly seems the right fit to direct a frothy rom-com that’s trying to dance on that ever-elusive fine line between adhering to demanding genre convention – demanding both in form and from fans, who are legion – and jazzing it up with badly needed fresh perspectives. This is the guy who made the (admittedly controversial) feminist (?) screed Bandit Queen, about outlaw turned parliamentarian Phoolan Devi, and Elizabeth, about outlaw turned monarch Elizabeth I. Kapur’s most famous works pivot on the kind of formidable women who are anathema to rom-coms. Wait a sec. Maybe he’s the guy for the job after all.
Will these poor kids make it?
JK! He’s not. Not because Kapur doesn’t understand filmmaking but because the wan script he’s working from, by cricketer-turned-Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan’s ex-wife Jemima, doesn’t really dig deep and say anything new, or even remotely interesting. The DNA for a truly subversive rom-com is there, but all the parts that would contribute to innovating the form are skimmed over. Yes, yes. It’s hard to keep it light, fluffy and romantic when racism and micro-aggressions are a fact of one of the central couple’s life, but Billy Eichner mostly managed to get around homophobia and micro-aggressions in Bros, so Khan and Kapur have no excuse.
Award-winning (we’re told) documentary filmmaker Zoe gets up close and personal with Kaz’s arranged – now called assisted – marriage when she pitches a chronicle of the process as her next film. Kaz and Aisha start looking for candidates, including at a mixer hosted by Mo the Matchmaker (Asim Chaudhry, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch), one of the more amusing sequences, when boom! He meets the demure, wholesome Maymouna (Pakistani superstar Sajal Aly) by Zoom and it’s off to vividly shot Lahore (by DOP Remi Adefarasin) for a wedding. Is Maymouna all she seems? Are they right for each other? Does Zoe struggle with unacknowledged feelings for Kaz? Will her mom Cath throw down in a Bollywood-inspired production number? Again, it’a a rom-com.
Khan’s functional, un-creative script sets up all sorts of dominoes to knock over and connections and contrasts to explore, but none with any depth. Aisha tells Zoe at one point that it’s better to “fall into like and walk into love,” prompting Zoe to make an attempt at happiness with Cath’s vet, James (Oliver Chris), particularly in the wake of her best pal Helena’s shattered marriage. There’s plenty of back and forth about the clash of tradition and modernity, and of cultures, that sometimes result in painful family secrets and loneliness. But we know these things. What’s Love Got to Do with It? isn’t really blazing a new trail, and it’s not funny enough to make up the difference. Case in point: Thompson’s insufferable Cath isn’t the charming kook she’s meant to be. She’s just irritating, and when Zoe rolls her eyes at her, so do we.
That said, this plays by rom-com rules and fans of the form will be pleased. The ending is happy, the guy is handsome, and the rival girls don’t “hate” each other, itself an innovation. Props. Pakistani culture isn’t fetishised, and Latif does a decent job (considering the material) demonstrating how many plates he needs to keep spinning as a Pakistani-Brit, and Aly how un-foreign modern Pakistan can be. Who, pray tell, is Maymouna’s gay BFF and when does he get his own film? Sadly there’s not a whole hell of a lot to Zoe other than being a terrible filmmaker. James (who’s either the one in Paris or Pamela Anderson, I can’t tell the difference, and please don’t add Emilia Clarke to the mix of white British girls with substantial eyebrows) cries and gets drunk on cue, and does her rom-com girl duty capably. She’s still playing an archetype as pre-determined as any horror Final Girl, and to pour salt in the wound, it’s unclear if she learnt anything from her own film. Kind of like us. — DEK