146. Cake; movie review

CAKE
Cert 12A
126 mins
BBFC advice: Contains infrequent strong language, moderate sex references

I always feel as if I want to prelim a review of a Pakistani movie by stating my continued surprise over how it offers such a different representation of the country to the one we see in the West.
Watching too many news reports or social media claims here would lead to the impression that women are terribly oppressed.
However, Pakistan's films give a different angle. For example, I have yet to see a woman who consistently wears a head scarf in public.
Indeed, during Asim Abbasi's Cake, the lead characters are strident women who spend much of the movie putting men in their place.
This is a family drama which begins with disparate adult children coming together after their father (Mohammad Ahmed) suffers a heart attack.
Sanam Saeed plays Zara, the younger daughter who has returned from America to try to help nurse him back to health.
Meanwhile, Aamina Sheikh is her sibling adversary Zareen and it takes no time for the pair to be at loggerheads.
Cake doesn't simply offer a different perspective of Pakistan - it also demonstrates a very significant gulf between the haves and have-nots.
The family at the centre of the movie fit very much in the former category, living in a property in Karachi but owning land and a mansion out in the country.
And, boy, do they have skeletons in their closet.
Abbasi's film takes such a long time to get into its stride that I was left wondering if it ever would.
Family wrangles are played out but leave the audience (actually it was just me at Derby Odeon) to feel as if they intruding on private animosity.
However, it transpires that the narrative is leading up to a riveting denouement which makes sense of all that has gone before.
Cake is another example of the revival of Pakistani cinema and offers a welcome diversion from the incessant wedding-based romances or punchy thrillers which come out of Bollywood, Pollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood (yes, they all exist).
And it has two stirring central performances from Sheikh and Saeed as well as Beo Raana Zafar who plays their mum with an impish twinkle in her eye.

Reasons to watch: Builds into a quality family drama
Reasons to avoid: Takes too long to really bite

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Vomit: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 7.5/10

Director Asim Abbasi: "I started writing it a month a half before my father had a heart attack. It became a film that I was writing and the same thing was happening to me."

The big question - Why is Pakistan represented so harshly in the West?

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