What's Love Got to Do With It?
Shekhar Kapur, UK, 2023o
Despite Parship & Co, Zoe, an aspiring filmmaker from London, is not yet in a steady relationship at the age of thirty - and is causing her carefree single mother serious worries with it. For Zoe's childhood friend, the Pakistani secondo Kazim, on the other hand, things are clear. He follows tradition and chooses an arranged marriage. Zoe is stunned. She decides to accompany the designated couple with her camera until the pompous wedding in Lahore, Pakistan. But her professional interest is less clear than she claims.
Fancy an after-work film that is uncomplicated and yet not silly? Then you'll be right with this comedy about the free choice of life partner in the West and the allegedly still common arranged marriages among British-Pakistani secondos. Border crosser Shekhar Kapoor, whose credits include the two Elizabeth films with Cate Blanchett, has a London-based up-and-coming filmmaker and a young doctor of Pakistani origin, who grew up door to door, share their tragicomic experiences with Western dating and Eastern marriage of convenience. Of course, the two mismatches are meant for each other, but Kapoor and his casually parrying scenarist offer up quite a few spasms with the love life's respective illogic, including a very colorful wedding feast in Lahore and a bubbly Emma Thompson as a cheerful single mother who worries about her thirty-year-old chick's single status. The young Brit is embodied by Lily James (Darkest Hour), the Paki secondo by the beau Shazad Latif (The Man Who Knew Infinity). Both play off each other with wit and charm over the fact that the gulf between them is less deep than the plot suggests.
Andreas FurlerGalleryo
