With his new film "What's Love Got to Do with It?" director Shekhar Kapur ("Elizabeth") has made a feel-good rom-com about the topic of arranged — also known as assisted —marriages.
Zoe (Lily James) is a documentarian who wants to make a film about honor killings. But her producers want something more, well, upbeat. This prompts her to chronicle her Pakistani next-door neighbor (and best friend) Kazim's (Shazad Latif) efforts to find a bride through assisted marriage. Zoe, a romantic who hasn't found Mr. Right, is skeptical of the practice, but Kazim thinks it might be a good option — especially since he has seen Zoe repeatedly fail at romance using dating apps.
Kapur provides a light touch as Zoe learns more about the assisted marriage tradition and encounters different opinions about love and marriage. Moreover, Zoe's mother, Cath (Emma Thompson) is doing her own version of matchmaking in her not-so-subtle efforts to set Zoe up with James (Oliver Chris), a veterinarian.
"What's Love Got to Do with It?" features Zoe reframing "fairy tale" notions about love, giving them more realistic outcomes. These amusing scenes are contrasted with Kazim's "simmer to boil" approach, which allows love to take the time it needs to develop, which, of course, it does.
Kapur spoke with Salon about his new film, assisted marriage, and dating.
What are your thoughts about arranged or assisted marriage?
I've not had an arranged marriage, but everyone tried very hard. I've been through the process of meeting a family. Arranged marriages came up because traditionally, families married families. It's families getting together — political families, business families. Now it's completely different. A boy and girl will get married and go off to New York and never see their family again. At the time, arranged marriages involved a whole family system, with brothers, and sisters, and in-laws absorbing the stresses and strains of two people trying to adjust to and find each other.
We don't have that anymore. An arranged marriage has value now because that doesn't happen; it's gone into assisted. But what culture doesn't have assisted marriage? With my first marriage, my friend said, "Shekhar is single; we know this girl who is single," and we met and got married. It was assisted by family and friends. But look at "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or "Crazy Rich Asians" — it is a tradition all over the world. Parents think they can do better. I remember In London, and I had friends who live with girlfriends, and they were white girls. They would not tell anyone. They would go back to India, get married, and come back with a wife. Somewhere there was the fear of a different culture. But now we are so culturally linked together, it's fine.
I think of "Crossing Delancey," with the Jewish matchmaker. Your film emphasizes love and family, but also the expectations parents have for their children and the children rebelling. How do you see relationships and dating in this age of social media?
That's why I wanted to do this film — to understand what does it mean, in this age of social media and dating apps — to look for love? It is fundamental human need and emotion. If you get addicted to dating apps, are you finding intimacy? The film doesn't make value judgments on that. But it shows: What does it mean to have so much choice? Women suddenly have power. A woman can swipe up, down, left, right, and decide who she wants to go out with, or have sex with, or who she wants to date. A long time ago, she had to be asked. It gives women a choice. How do you deal with finding love and intimacy with so much choice? And then [with assisted marriage] you are confronted with: I don't want so much choice. I'm going to put it all on my parents. It's an interesting juxtaposition.
This is your first rom-com. You lean into the tropes — the dating montage — but the film is a bit cynical about romance. Can you talk about your thoughts on the film's perspectives about dating?
It is not cynical about love and intimacy. I have a personal view on love and intimacy that love is a mystery. You fall in love, and the day the mystery and longing go away, it's over. Once you find a partner, whichever way you go about that, it is the beginning of sustaining a relationship. The film is not saying. "This is good or bad." It's saying, "It's your journey." One thing I was keen on was that even if this is a rom-com, the actors must be real. I told the actors, find Zoe and Kazim in yourself; don't play at them. The moment you say, "rom-com," everyone "plays." Let the comedy take care of itself.
Your films "Bandit Queen" and "Elizabeth" feature strong female protagonists, and Zoe is also full of self-confidence, even if she exhibits some self-doubt. What attracts you to telling women's stories?
The genre of filmmaking is changing now, but it used to be that if the protagonist was a man the "fight back" was all action. With women, the "fight back," you have to explore the spirit. Male characters with a feminist point of view were like Mandela, or Gandhi, or spiritual people. Spirituality has a feminine quality. With masculine films, out come the fists or guns. But feminist films are an exploration of human spirit.
Sajal Aly in "What's Love Got to Do With It" (Robert Viglasky/StudioCanal/Shout! Studios)
You intercut scenes from Zoe's documentary, and feature "fairy tale" segments that disrupt the main narrative but also comment on it. How did you incorporate the various narrative threads?
The great thing is those narratives is that they don't have to be complete. If its complete, you have judged it. The fairy tales are suggestions. The whole film is about you deciding. As a director, when you weave that together, you try hard not to come to point; you let the audience decide.
Can you talk about your visual approach to the film? You also create scenes with beautiful lighting, such as Kazim's initial face-to-face meeting with his bride, Maymouna (Sajal Ali), as well as a fabulous wordless wedding sequence, and a high energy dance scene.
With Maymouna, it was essential to make audiences feel that she is stuck in a place she can't get out of. I had to light it so she was a gentle flower and you wondered why she was getting into this. If you look at Maymouna carefully, every once in a while, you glimpse her strength. She gives hints at her real character. The first meeting has beautiful lighting, and it is gentle and romantic. Later, the lighting is something else; it's blue. The visual style always follows the story of the characters.
As for the wedding scene, weddings are like that — completely over the top. Every wedding I've gone to has been that way. In that whole collision of chaos of color there is the chaos of the camera movement. You get taken away by the glamour of it, and then you get caught up in something frenetic, and in that, you pick up more messages.
What do you think your film is saying about race and assimilation? Zoe's documentary is criticized for being told through a white lens. But your film is written by Jemima Khan, a white woman, and Kazim makes about "British-born" being code for "Non-white."
Every time I go to international airports, I am told, "You have been randomly selected." There is a lot of truth in all of that. At the end, I want the audience to not be separated by looking at an Asian family. That was what I wanted to portray: Forget that there is a particular Muslim identity and separate yourself from these characters.
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This political aspect you mention — that it was written by a white woman — personally, I think Working Title [the production company] was very conscious of that. I would have been less reverent. [Laughs] I would have done more with Cath's character being completely irreverent.
There was talk about that. Seeing Asian society through a white woman's lens is part of the plot. Jemima wrote it, and she had a lot of experience. She saw it firsthand. She was more caring and concerned about how we presented the film than I was. I also know these people. They are a lot like me. I think I was brought on because I understood them. I was a brown man making a film in which it was important to lessen the impact of identity. Jemima had the right to make and write this film. She was married [to Imran Khan Niazi] and is much loved in Pakistan, even though they have been divorced for 20 years.
"What's Love Got to Do with It?" opens nationwide in theaters on May 5.
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