Joyland’s quiet, queer radicalism

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This article was published 09/06/2023 (1209 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The title of this family drama — which refers, in its literal sense, to an amusement park in Lahore — is both deeply sincere and heartbreakingly ironic. Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq, making a deft feature debut here, has crafted a small film (in Urdu and Punjabi, with subtitles) that still manages to encompass a huge emotional range of joy and grief.

The Rana family lives in a multigenerational household, mostly affectionate but also claustrophobic. Sweet, gentle Haider (Ali Junejo) has been unemployed since his marriage and seems happy to stay home and care for his nieces, while his practical, independent wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) works at a salon.

Haider’s older brother Saleem (Sameer Sohail) and his wife Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani) have three little girls and are hoping the next baby will be a boy, which would please their father (Salmaan Peerzada), who looms over the house as a disapproving patriarch.

Sadiq brings us into the Ranas’ domestic routines with patient, specific observation, and one senses the family could just go on this way, the surface of their days only occasionally broken by the unspoken tensions and hidden desires running underneath.

Then Haider gets a job at an erotic dance palace, pretending to his family that he’s the new theatre manager when he’s actually working as a backup dancer to trans performer Biba (played by trans actress Alina Khan). Against a backdrop of Lollywood-style dance numbers, Haider and Biba’s relationship gradually becomes more than professional.

Junejo plays Haider with tremendous poignance and subtlety, and Khan is a force as Biba, imperious and elegant when she performs but perhaps even stronger offstage, where she is constantly confronting small cruelties and threats of violence.

It’s all beautifully shot, with careful framing that feels intimate and close. Sadiq draws on the tradition of South Asian neo-realism in the low-key, lived-in scenes that take place in the family’s crowded home, while offering visual contrast in trippy neon night-scapes as Haider starts to venture beyond the bounds of his family.

Sadiq and co-scripter Maggie Briggs imbue the queer love story with quiet radicalism. Without ever feeling didactic, the film delicately unpacks the way assumptions about gender and sex have limited the characters’ lives.

And that means all the characters. This humane and generous film has empathy to spare. From the widow down the street always stopping by with sweets, to Nucchi and Mumtaz heading out to Joyland for one gravity-defying night of careless fun, even to the family’s grim father — everyone has their moments of vulnerability and humanity.

All these story threads come together in a nuanced, complex conclusion that combines deep sadness and (some) muted hope. Sadiq is a filmmaker to watch.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.com