Joyland ***half

 Joyland ***half

Very delicate sensitive film on local Pakistanese family, the struggles, the difficulties and everyday lives.

Womens positions in society what does it mean as a transexual person trying to do things for themselves, not to please an opposite sex.  Complicated, delicate and well defined in every turn of the story.

Only one point, as a woman who has a job outside the home when the husband have never found a job, she really doesnt mind, she doesnt want to stay home.  The young woman works at a salon for makeup, she wants her liberty, strong woman; shes able to kill a lamb when her soft sensitive husband is unable to.

Finally pregnant with a boy, but she drinks poison to liberate herself of this unending undesirable life ahead of her.  This part is a flaw in the script, as a strong women shown all along, understanding at the same time, she is a friend of her husband, but here we are, i am not convinced she would have taken her own life.  A woman pregnant w a new life and who has no unforseeable hell coming, she would not have been so discouraged to kill herself.  I do not believe this strong woman suddenly just drinks poison! Why?  She has a v friendly sister in law, she could give birth and leave the family shes not in prison.  Pregnant woman are invincible and full of fight and life, unless they are mentally weak to begin with, but this character was not shown as a weak person.  

Story is too lame here, it would have been much better if she continues w her strong character, we might not know the end of the story, but a pregnant woman properly married to a man she has sympathy for, without any terrible troubles, just does not drink poison and kills herself just like that.

Other than that, camera angles, acting all v v gd.

This makes me think, within a society, what kind of stories are possible?  You can only tell a story based on possibilities of the givens.  We would not believe that he leaves his wife w a new born baby boy, everybody is happy and the wife is now independant - she goes to work at the salon as usual, makes her own decisions, etc.  and he, he stays home to be the house husband drops the dancing job and marries his boss, a pretty transexual erotic dancer, now with a higher earning at clubs and a much better freer person. The husband not only does not work outside, he also earns the sentimental love of his former boss who is also a mistress, a transexual !  This type of combination would not occur in the set up of the film - its a setting in Pakistan not in some urban city with get with it deal with it culture -  ie as in the film Brazil on marginal people living their lives.

The setting allows only a certain type of story to be told.

Nice movie, well done.