A young Pakistani-Canadian woman travels to Karachi and reconnects with
her mother following her father's death.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Fawzia Mirza
Starring: Amrit Kaur, Nimra Bucha, Hamza Haq
The Queen of My Dreams ("In color," to recognise the title's
witty appendage) opens upon the recognisable scenario of a dedicated film
fan enthusiastically introducing a partner to a movie of considerable
importance to them. However, this isn't the overfamiliarity of a filmbro
painstakingly explaining Fincher's use of chiaroscuro lighting to a
wall-eyed suitor: in writer/director Fawzia Mirza's energetic
comedy drama, the film in question is Bollywood classic
Aradhana, revered by millennial Azra (Amrit Kaur) to her girlfriend (Charlie Boyle) who duly laughs along with Azra's singing-and-dancing, while
questioning the vivid idiosyncrasies of the mode; the dual roles, the
"insane" plot, and the "old age make up." Significantly, the cute opening
takes place within an apartment of the same colourful pantones featured in
the lavish settings of the VHS which the couple watch.
Aside from establishing the winning charm of the film as a whole, the
sequence also manages the expectations of its potential audience, as
several of the cited cautions could also apply to
The Queen of My Dreams, with its storytelling that will homage various tropes of the Bollywood
"genre." In further conflation, a cooler voiceover from our heroine has
already informed us how she associates her mother (whom she "tried to be
like" but couldn't, due to the matriarch's staunch conservatism) with
Hindi cinema and in particular its reigning queen, Sharmila Tagore. As a
Muslim child in 1980s Canada, the vibrant cinema of Bollywood proposed a
culture and history for the pre-teen Azra to lose herself within, a
liberation from the social exclusions she experiences and which we see in
flashback (the various mocked up covers in the video shop make for good
pictorial jokes). Moreover, The Queen of My Dreams is based
on Mirza's solo stage show, and the period set film accordingly retains an
authentic sense of biography.
Make that period plural, as, following a family tragedy, Azra returns to
Pakistan, and the film engages us with a series of '60s-based episodes
depicting the developing romance between her parents, wherein Kaur also
plays Azra's younger, more playful mum Mariam. An intriguing aspect of
The Queen of My Dreams is whether these flashbacks are
incidents which actually occurred at some point within the film's
diegesis, or if they are presented as Azra's romanticised imaginings.
Certainly, the mise-en-scene of these nostalgic sequences is resplendent
and suffused with technicolor detail pertaining to Pakistan culture. For
example, there is a recurring montage of a meal being prepared in quick,
sizzling edits of ghee melting, chillis efficiently chopped; a feast which
will become part of familial communication regarding the potentiality of
arranged marriages between respective children. Concerning this tradition,
conflict occurs when Mariam independently falls in love with Hassan, who
is to pursue a study of medicine in Scotland, which is half a world away
from Mariam's family...
Mariam's parental dispute is mirrored by Azra's queerness - she has not
come out to her parents and refers to Sharon as a "flat-mate." It is still
illegal to be homosexual in
Pakistan today
and homophobia prevails in
South Asia: The Queen of My Dreams is set a quarter of a century ago
from today. Within this warm-hearted film there is no harrowing depiction
of persecution, however, and Mariam's attitudes are presented as being
part of a tradition where sexuality of any form is rarely discussed.
Beguilingly, Bollywood product itself epitomises a certain strain of camp:
an art of the masses, which with its hyperbolic nature of colour, song and
performance expresses the "proper mixture of the exaggerated, the
fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve": in visual terms, a close
cultural equivalent is the pageantry and theatrics of gay cabaret. With
the expressive cinema deployed within
The Queen of My Dreams as an escapist framework for Azra's
dissatisfaction with her adolescent lot there is an interesting suggestion
of especial queer appeal.
Perhaps The Queen of My Dreams could have benefitted from
additional examination of this cultural context (the film ends just at the
precipice of a "coming-out-of-age" denouement) to further compliment the
fluid presentation of Mariam and little Azra's immigrant stories, as,
being an intelligent, modern and queer Muslim, adult Azra is, after all,
the successful, ongoing result of these previous narratives. A highly
ambitious movie, at times The Queen of My Dreams doesn't
quite leave space to fully explore its propositions. Back to that start,
nonetheless: after Azra qualifies what she and Sharon are about to watch,
she reassures her that "it's the best." With its big heart and rainbow
energy, Azra's judgement is a superlative which could likewise be applied
to much of The Queen of My Dreams.
The Queen of My Dreams is on UK/ROI VOD now.
