REVIEW: What’s Love Got to Do with It? [2023]

Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 108 minutes
Release Date: February 24th, 2023 (UK) / May 5th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: StudioCanal UK / Shout! Studios
Director(s): Shekhar Kapur
Writer(s): Jemima Khan

Did you bring your Pantone color chart?

Not to ruin a joke in the movie, but it’s quite fitting that the vapid finance bros who commission the in-film documentary that Zoe Stevenson (Lily James) is making would eventually realize they forgot a “check” while discussing how well the project fit their “woke” profitability rubric. Yes, the topic of arranged marriages by way of a British-Pakistani groom (Shazad Latif’s Kazim) and the Pakistani bride their parents matched (Sajal Ali’s Maymouna) does check the “ethnic” box. And yes, Zoe being a woman does check the “female director” box.

But what about the fact that she’s white? These two guys are so transparent themselves that they completely forgot the lens holds as much importance as the optics. That’s why What’s Love Got to Do with It? made sure to check all three with British screenwriter Jemima Khan (who lived and loved Pakistan when married to her former husband) and Pakistani director Shekhar Kapur (of Elizabeth fame).

These meta layers and parallels are a big part of the film’s success, allowing it to both have its heart (as far as depicting love, culture, and a humanistic glimpse at a nation too often rejected as a terrorist hotbed) and its mind (where self-deprecating humor about the industry, “modern” romance, and appropriation are concerned) in the right place. Because it’s easy to get confused about the world we live in when so many overlaps and diversions create insular bubbles.

Zoe has always seen Kaz as a Brit, forgetting everything he faces as a person of color in a Europe that’s quick to label him “British-born” instead. And Kaz has always seen Zoe as a welcome, if bad, influence on who he can strive to be outside the confines of his conservative Muslim family, but nothing more. He’s seen what happened when his older sister chose a non-Muslim husband. She was disowned. The only way to therefore ensure that everyone is happy when it comes to his desire to start a family is by letting his parents (Shabana Azmi’s Aisha and Jeff Mirza’s Zahid) choose for him.

So, the narrative progresses simultaneously as an education for the audience in how voluntarily arranged (not forced) marriages unfold in the twentieth century and a rom-com that never shies from the fact Zoe and Kaz have an unrequited, figuratively forbidden chemistry that increases the closer his nuptials get.

She’s there for every moment of the lead-up as director of a film about his life—desperate to continuously make certain that he’s making the right decision without saying how she feels (if she even truly knows yet) while he watches as she continuously dates horrible men without being able to risk losing his family by admitting the love for her that he does know exists. And since we can be confident it will eventually all be said aloud, it doesn’t need to be a distraction. Khan and Kapur can let it linger in the background as a major through line while focusing on everything else in an honest and authentic way. The topic of arranged marriages isn’t just their gimmicky cupid’s arrow. Its inclusion matters.

So too does Maymouna’s part in this ordeal. And the suffering of Kaz’s family since the fracture between his sister and grandmother demands its complexity not be dismissed as some fear-mongered example of Islamic rigidity. Even Emma Thompson as Zoe’s mother and Khan family’s decades-long neighbor needs room to be more than just the benignly insensitive comic relief (adoring Pakistani culture while still backhandedly expressing why via ingrained whiteness).

By allowing all these disparate characters to be one giant unconventional “family,” they can better express and repress their fears and desires. We can learn why someone like Kaz would agree to the arrangement sans judgement and recognize that it still might not be the right solution for him. Or for Maymouna. Or for Zoe once her mother begins “arranging” a blind date for her based on stability and more checked boxes that forget the bigger picture. Khan and Kapur are destigmatizing without overtly championing because, in the end, love is all that matters either way.