What Will People Say (Hva vil folk si) is the second feature from Pakistani-Norwegian director Iram Haq, premiering in Australia at this year’s Scandinavian Film Festival. Spoken in both Norwegian and Urdu, and shot in both Oslo and Rajasthan, Haq presents a film that is truly informed by the migrant experience, and one that reflects the difficulties of being trapped between two cultural backgrounds, and the difficulties young people face when those values might not entirely align themselves together. However, for those expecting a nuanced, thoughtful take on this issue, they may find themselves disappointed; What Will People Say is entirely heavy-handed, blunt, and replaces thoughtful or profound critique for the graphic, controversial, and the exploitative.
The film tells the story of Nisha, a Pakistani-Norwegian girl who gets up to all the hallmarks of generic “bad girl” behaviour amongst her Norwegian friends, but at home fulfils the duty of a studious, quiet, and obedient daughter. When her father encounters her in bed with a boy, her family make the decision to kidnap her and send her to Pakistan to stay with her father’s family. What this brings is an ordeal of misery: Nisha is beaten, raped, humiliated, nearly forced to commit suicide, forced to lie to child protective services, and presented with an arranged marriage. This cavalcade of torture is distressing to watch, not only for its content, but in the extremely poor handling of its subject matter; the film presents the issues as plainly black and white – us v them – it demonises the foreign and exalts the Western. It presents no diversity of viewpoint, no depth of character, and no explanation nor justification. I certainly don’t deny that these atrocities are committed to women over the world, but Haq presents no further insight or knowledge than a Daily Mail article.
Haq has drawn from her own story in making this film, and intended also to spark dialogue on cultural differences, rather than play into Islamophobia or cultural stereotyping. However, this arguably makes the experience of watching the film even more baffling, as the lack of explanation or detail leads one to believe that this was the intention. Poorly written dialogue does not support the logical discord present within the film’s narrative, particularly in its female characters who bizarrely are painted as the primary villains despite the patriarchal nature of Pakistani society, and the presumption that they too would have dealt with the same experiences (again, this remains unexplained and unexplored by the director and writer). The film is also sloppily shot without depth or flair, and many lazy scenes employ a faux-handheld approach to manufacture drama and tension.
I left the cinema disappointed and frustrated after What Will People Say, as the film was neither informative, nor perceptive in its approach to storytelling. Its confounding narrative propels the film ever into the more incomprehensible, and the lack of thoughtful execution cheapens what is an important and challenging story. The film ends with no resolve or insight into the complex feelings each of the characters must be feeling, it ends as it began: good guy v bad guy. At the risk of aiming to be too political, Islamic migrants in Scandinavia are now facing more opposition than ever, and unfortunately, I can’t help but feel that this film plays into an already existing sense of prejudice due to its lack of detail and nuance. Films are not made in a social vacuum, and unfortunately, Haq’s message and intention is lost in a dizzying flurry of never-ending and never-explained misery.
Dylan (18)
Scandinavian Film Festival