Cake
- Romessa Nadeem
- Dec 20, 2017
- 2 min read
Directed by Asim Abbasi
Starring
Aamina Sheikh
Sanam Saeed
Adnan Malik
Faris Khalid
Beo Raana Zafar
It’s about time our industry produced a movie with actual characters and a plot that isn’t riddled with item songs, dumb over-the-top shenanigans and senseless one-liners that are neither clever nor humorous. Eventually all those trailers and movies end up looking the same; generic and blandly formulaic.
The typical recipe for a Pakistani film (and let’s be honest, most films) is that which ensures people flooding to cinemas. The entire thing needs to be dumbed down to cater to the masses that, God forbid, might need to do actual thinking to understand the complexities of reality.
All girls who smoke aren’t leather jacket clad “bad girls” involved in big mafia rings. Humor doesn’t need to be punctuated with booming voices, yelling and shouting. Movies aren’t just about what will attract people to theatres, or rather they shouldn’t be. They should ideally be a reflection of reality, even if somehow skewed. They’re about abstractions and the intricacies of authentic relationships. Cake by all appearances promises that.
Cake looks like it might want to have a conversation with the audience instead of being a disposable two hours of “bari tutti frutti hoon mein” (I apologize for bringing that into your consciousness) It doesn’t appear to talk down to its audience, rather it looks very mature and focused. The irritating melodrama and flimsy emotion that’s usually a feature of most movies has been traded in for what appears to be character depth and crafty filmmaking. The emotional moments actually look like they’re earned and built up to, instead of shoved in our faces because that’s what the trope requires.
Aamina Sheikh has been a longtime favorite in the industry as has Sanam Saeed. Both have tremendous acting chops and might be able to produce subtle and effective drama (provided with the right script) particularly outside of the “dun dun dun” saas bahoo madness usually populating our TV screens. Cake provides relief and much needed hope in the oversaturation of the dumb cookie cutter films we’re usually subjected to.
Comments