'Joyland' Review: More Than a Love Story, a Tale Of Desires Stubbed By Misogyny

Joyland is a film that breaks your heart and makes sure you won't recover from it.

Director Saim Sadiq’s debut feature Joyland is a tale that actually makes you believe in the magic of cinema.

(Photo: Still from the film)

In the opening scene of the 2022 Pakistani drama Joyland, the protagonist Haider, played by Ali Junejo, is covered with a white sheet, pretending to be a ghost, playing hide-and-seek with his three young nieces. 

At the end of the 126 minute feature film, Haider is at the beach, being slowly engulfed in the vastness of the sea, in a long shot beautifully executed by cinematographer Joe Saade.

These two scenes give you a window to a major theme the film deals with – an invisibility of desires – without explicitly saying so.

Director Saim Sadiq’s debut feature Joyland is a tale that actually makes you believe in the magic of cinema. It’s funny at times, poignant at others, heartbreaking, and written with such sensitivity that it leaves you thinking about its universe long after you’ve left the theatre.

Still from Joyland.

It's no wonder then that hordes of people waited outside India Habitat Centre's Stein Auditorium in Delhi, on Saturday, 25 March, waiting for the doors to open to finally watch the film in India. With online passes going out of stock less than an hour after the registration window was opened on Thursday, people still turned up to watch the film, hoping to get walk-in entries.

I watched the film with an enthusiastic bunch. People clapped, screamed, laughed in the audience. And what a joy to have witnessed Joyland with people who, at the end of the film, clutched at the armrest of their seats and cried.

Silent sobs filled the auditorium as the credits rolled on the screen and the lights were switched on.

A Queer Love Story & A Platonic Marriage

The film, set in Lahore, revolves around the Rana family. A 70-year-old widower, Abbaji (Salmaan Peerzada), is the patriarch of the household, who laments each day that he does not have a grandson and that his younger son Haider does not have a job.

Haider, who plays the homemaker along with his older sister-in-law, is married to Mumtaz, a role beautifully essayed by Rasti Farooq. Mumtaz works at a local salon as a make-up artist, is ingenious, the breadwinner between the two of them, and plays (what could be assumed as) the masculine role in their relationship.

Still from Joyland.

That is until Haider lands a job as a background dancer in an erotic theatre production. This is where he meets Biba (Alina Khan), a trans woman who is the act’s lead, and falls in love with her.

Sitting in the audience, you’d assume that this is the central plotline of the film, the love story between a man and a trans woman. And Haider and Biba become the protagonists in this for you. Their stolen glances in public, Haider hugging her on the two-wheeler, him standing up for her (by sitting down next to her in the women's coach of the metro), the two of them kissing in the by-lanes of Lahore.

Still from Joyland.

Isn’t this what you’d gone to watch?

An Invisibility Of Lives & Desires

A man discovering his sexuality with a fierce woman, who takes people and problems head on, who knows what she wants, and who is even ready to let go of her love because she already has enough to deal with without his crippling uncertainty. 

This is what every other synopsis of the film available on the internet promised you. But when it actually transpires on the screen, you realise Joyland is not the tale of Haider and Biba alone.

Still from Joyland.

It’s the tale of Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani), the older daughter-in-law of the Rana household, who’s just had her fourth baby girl, another failed attempt at giving the family a male heir.

It’s the tale of Aunty Fayyaz (Sania Saeed), the neighbour, who tries to take control of her life through one tiny act of courage, but whose wings are cut even before she can take off. 

But most importantly, Joyland is Mumtaz’s story. It’s the story of what it means to harbour desires in a society that doesn’t allow you to dream. Before their marriage was arranged, Haider had promised Mumtaz that he wouldn't restrict her to the household.

Still from Joyland.

But that’s what ends up happening because Haider can’t confront people. Not his Abbaji when Mumtaz wants to work, not the other men in the room when they keep asking him what is between Biba’s legs, and not when he relegates the masculine role in the relationship, once again, to Biba. 

When There’s No Villain, Does Everyone Become The Villain?

The beauty in the script is such that even with everything happening to the characters, there’s no one who could be blamed as the villain. (Almost) everyone is a victim of internalised misogyny.

Even Saleem (Sameer Sohail) might be redeemed a little bit when he kisses Nucchi on the forehead after she gives birth, showing that he cares, or when he doesn’t explicitly mention to Haider what he caught Mumtaz doing. 

Still from Joyland.

However, the sensitivity with which Sadiq and his co-writer Maggie Briggs write about the patriarchal hold on the lives of Pakistani women, and the loneliness that they’re cornered into, with nowhere to go, no one to understand them, is beyond beautiful.

One such scene that might haunt you is when Mumtaz casually asks Haider, “Abhi bhi nazar nahi aa rahi? (You can’t see me even now?)”

So you might as well have gone to watch a trans love story unfold on the screen, but what you are left thinking about, long after the end credits have rolled, is something much more soul-touching.

(Joyland was screened at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi as part of the 4th edition of the Habitat International Film Festival. The film won the Queer Palm and the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes last year and was Pakistan’s official shortlisted entry for the Academy Awards.)