'Joyland', 'queer' conflicts in contemporary Pakistan

2023-02-10T10:41:38.542Z

A delicate, revealing and pertinent work, capable of confronting not a few taboos in Pakistani society, which is not little. But it's not a great movie

The first Pakistani production selected by the Cannes festival in its entire history has also cherished an Oscar nomination for best international film.

Joyland

passed the first cut of the American academy (the one of the 15 shortlisted that

Alcarràs could not overcome)

and was left out in the last screening, after obtaining the Jury prize a few months ago in the section

Un certain mirada

in the French contest .

The globalization of reflection and criticism of the different forms of oppression around sexuality in territories of patriarchal domination has made its triumph possible.

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Two sisters who lived in Spain were murdered in Pakistan for refusing an arranged marriage

Saim Sadiq's debut feature,

Joyland

it is a delicate, revealing and pertinent work, capable of confronting not a few taboos in Pakistani society, which is not little.

But it's not a great movie.

His dalliances with friendly comedy may be at the base of his triumph, but they dwarf it because when it comes to delving into the drama, he prefers the objective of the indelible image instead of the depth in the analysis of the three main characters.

And it's a shame because Sadiq, also a co-writer, leaves a remarkable sequence for the epilogue that, delving into the past, at the root of the problems, rounds out his love triangle relatively well.

But social constraint, the impulse of tradition to restrict sexual freedom and the obligation of certain gender roles, the three great themes of the film,

Remnants of an arranged marriage.

She, heterosexual, working class and in love with her husband.

He, a repressed and silent homosexual, unemployed for too long, relegated in the middle-class home to traditionally feminine tasks.

The toughest relatives wonder why there are no children.

Third vertex: a trans woman, and heterosexual, with whom her husband falls in love after starting to work in a theatrical show of erotic dances in the stronghold of

queer tolerance

from the huge city of Lahore, the second most populous in the country with 11 million inhabitants, and one of the most liberal.

Conflicts, both externally, towards the rest of the family and society, and internally, with their breaches of expectations and their personal tragedy, have an impact.

Even abortion makes an appearance to round off an unsolvable situation in many aspects.

However, after revealing the frustrations of his creatures and facing a climate of hypocrisy with enormous possibilities, Sadiq seems to continue to prefer delicacy, the color of the country (clothes, lights, parties...) and some symbolic point never materialized, like that joke about the mosquito and the chicken that culminates with a false omen: “The destiny of love is death”.

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Joyland,

who on the one hand has minutes of footage left over and on the other is missing a couple of conversations of true height, wants to be bold, and in principle she is, although without ceasing to be pleasant and even docile.

And that slight degree of indecision in such a complex subject is what reduces the singularity of a work, certainly interesting and fully contemporary, released in his country last November and that he had to deal with for a few days, in which it was withdrawn from the cinemas, with the censorship attempts of various ultra-religious groups.