![]() ![]() The movie does make a brief point of differentiating between arranged and forced marriages. It’s truly baffling then, as to how What’s Love Got To Do With It? doesn’t avoid glaring blind spots. She was also an executive producer of the Emmy-nominated HBO series The Case Against Adnan Syed, among other documentaries. Khan may well have a particular insight into Pakistani society and their taur-tareeke (customs and rituals), given that she was once married to Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. It is ultimately a white woman’s gaze on another culture. ![]() Pitched as a rom-com that flits between London and Lahore, and tradition and modernity, What’s Love Got to Do With It? suffers from the same issue that Zoe has to contend with. She then manages to convince Kazim and his parents – the mother is played by veteran Indian actor Shabana Azmi – to let her document the “assisted marriage,” even as she has to fend off attempts by her divorcée mother, Cath (Emma Thompson), to set her up. Floundering in front of two producers to green light her next project, Zoe pitches Kazim’s traditional search for a bride. Her next-door neighbour and childhood friend, Kazim (Shazad Latif) is a doctor. The story goes thus: Zoe (Lily James) is a documentary filmmaker. The latest film set to join the wedding buffet is What’s Love Got To Do With It? Directed by Shekhar Kapur ( Elizabeth, The Four Feathers) and written by Jemima Khan, the movie had a gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. It’s a formula that could appeal to a cross-section of markets, besides fulfilling an inclusion rider. A rom-com with a soupçon of exotic culture thrown in – colourful costumes and dance routines, eccentric aunties and uncles, an exasperated younger generation. What else would explain the continuing onslaught of books, TV series and movies that want to unpack the notion of the modern arranged marriage – and why young people in South Asia and its diaspora would allow their families to set them up. And the South Asian tradition of arranged marriages is still an object of fascination – especially for those outside the culture. The social construct of marriage, nevertheless, continues to have a stronghold on us. Each union is as unique as the two people bound in matrimony, until the knot gets undone. There is no truth universally acknowledged as to why some marriages work and why some fail.
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