A sensitive exploration of what being queer means

Layla is the feature debut from non-binary British-Iraqi drag artist and film maker Amrou Al-Kadhi, and uses a deceptively traditional romantic story to explore the difficulties of navigating a life caught between queer and religious/ethic identities.

Layla (deadname Latif) is a non-binary drag queen from a Muslim family, who is living in London with three queer friends and has already become a star within their community.

 

However, they’re also trying to balance this with not being out to their family and, when they go back to visit, perform a conventional straight cis role. They are convinced that they cannot possibly be who they really are with their own family.

 

When they meet Max after a performance at a corporate London Pride do that goes spectacularly – and very funnily – wrong, the pair quickly start developing a romantic bond. But they’re also streets apart in terms of their lives. Max is from a well-to-do, white, middle-class family who are accepting of his rather beige gayness, but when Layla meets them, it’s clear that there are underlying issues around racism, Islamophobia and class.

 

And to add, Layla’s newly-married sister is moving to London with her husband.

 

This is a very sensitive film, while also being very frank. It is very unjudgmental and also helps to really explain what, for many LGBT+ people, ‘queer’ means.

 

Al-Kadhi’s direction and screenplay are excellent. Bilal Hasna as Layla is simply superb, while Louis Greatorex as Max is also very good. Indeed, It’s a very fine cast all around.

 

This was screened earlier this year at the BFI’s Flare festival and is now on more general release. It’s a very good addition to LGBTQI film.

A taste of brilliant cinema

A bit of catch-up cinema today, with a first viewing of A Taste of Honey, the 1961 film from director Tony Richardson from Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 play of the same name, which they jointly adapted.

An iconic piece of British New Wave – often described as kitchen sink drama – it opens as 17-year-old Jo is nearing the end of her time in school, desperate to escape both that and her self-absorbed, good-time mother Helen.

But even in her last few days at school, her mother hasn’t paid the rent, so the pair have to make a dash from their grubby lodgings to escape – not for the first time.

On the way to somewhere new to stay, Jo is helped with heavy suitcases by a young black man, Jimmy. Later, walking alongside the Manchester Ship Canal – she meets him again. He’s a cook on a ship that’s temporarily docked there. They begin a brief courtship.

Meanwhile, Helen has hooked up with a new boyfriend, Peter – clearly quite successful financially, but also rather seedy – who wants to make “an honest woman” of her. When a ‘family’ weekend trip to Blackpool goes wrong, Jo heads back to Manchester alone and bumps into Jimmy. They make love.

The inevitable happens, but she is supported by Geoffrey, a gay textile student, who moves into her grubby digs, does things up and generally looks after her.

However, Helen isn’t happy about that.

This is a very good film. From a personal perspective, it’s set in a part of the country I know – even if only some years later than the film was made – and has a resonance on that level.

It’s unflinching in terms of its approach to the post-war state of the country – children play on bomb sites and Jo is, more than once, disgusted to see children who are clearly not being looked after properly (a reflection of her own experience of growing up).

It’s not simplistic, though, never making the mistake of not understanding why we reach for moments of happiness, even if those can ultimately be costly.

The cast is uniformly excellent. Dora Bryan as Helen makes a mockery of any idea that she was ever ‘only’ a light comic actor. Robert Stephens is subtle in the role of the unpleasant, sexist Peter.

Both Paul Danquah as Jimmy and Murray Melvin as Geoffrey turn in nuanced performances that never fall into the trap of cliché.

To add, John Addison’s music is very effective – predominantly with the use of children singing, which reminds us of how young Jo in particular is.

Very much worth a watch.

Would you be a friend of Dorothy?

A hugely hygge weekend offered the opportunity for loads of reading. Having finished Bernadine Evaristo’s fabulous Mr Loverman on Saturday afternoon, I dived straight in to Sandi Toksvig’s new novel, Friends of Dorothy.

Police officer Stevie and paramedic Amber are not long married and they believe they’ve found the perfect home at 4 Grimaldi Square in London – albeit the square is generally rather run-down and with a nosy neighbour who’s shocked to discover she’s now living next door to married lesbians, and a nearly dead pub on one corner.

But when they go to move in, they find that Dorothy, the 80-year-old, foul-mouthed, straight-talking, wise-cracking woman they had bought the house from – has decided that she’s not moving out.

What follows draws in more local characters and develops into a sort of ‘caper’ book. I’ve heard the phrase ‘caper film’ more than once, but this really is the first time I can recall thinking of a book as a ‘caper book’. But I can’t think of it as anything else, given some of the scenes – and one late scene in particular.

Yet don’t let that con you. It is also remarkably subtle too. Toksvig uses her story to touch on class, race – and, of course, LGBTQ – issues, without being heavy-handed about it.

There are a number of interweaving stories here, all of which Toksvig uses to illustrate her central premise of “logical, not biological” families. The old saying is that ‘you can choose your friends but not your family’, yet some in the LGBT+ community are challenging that idea and what constitutes your family and how you organise/deal with such relationships.

It might sound ‘light’ – and it is, in many ways – but Toksvig is a really skilled storyteller and that’s why it never feels like you’re being lectured to. As a tiny example, while she never says whether Grimaldi Square is in north, south, east or west London, it felt so recognisable to me that I had a sense of ‘knowing’ that it was not far from where I live in east London.

It’s a funny story, but with real, real heart. A lovely, humane read. I got through its 350 pages in less than 24 hours, which should tell you something.