Written by: Noor ul Ain
Posted on: December 10, 2018 | 
| 中文
(L-R) Hajra Yamin as Pinky, Kiran Malik as Mehr and supporting actors as friends
Pinky Memsaab premiered this weekend as the debut film of director and writer Shazia Ali Khan. It follows the story of Pinky, who moves from a village in Punjab, Pakistan to Jumeirah, Dubai as domestic help for a “memsaab.” In a scene in the film, Pinky (Hajra Yamin), Santosh (Sunny Hinduja), the driver for the household and Grace (Mariel Bianca Salazar), their Filipino maid, sit at a table and talk about their individual pasts that find them at this juncture in life.
This sense of camaraderie between the three, translates to a greater web of social connections that tie this diaspora community together. We taste a morsel of this immigrant displacement throughout the characters of this film—be it fortressed in the villas of memsaabs’ like Mehr (Kiran Malik) or in the desperation of women like Kulsoom (Hajra Khan), working in shady dance clubs to support their families.
The film tries to weave together this story of displacement and self-discovery, through two female lead characters that grow and learn from each other, as well as the daunting circumstances they find themselves in. Each must find the strength to negotiate their space in the community and understand the importance of family, as well as people who eventually become like family. Hajra Yamin does a fantastic portrayal of a naïve, frightened village girl, whose small world is suddenly pulled taut as she discovers the complexities of life in this bustling metropolis. Her sidekick is the jolly, lovestruck Santosh, played by Indian actor Sunny Hinduja, who perhaps offers the most nuanced portrayal of an otherwise one-dimensional role. One only wishes he was allowed more space to become a fully-fleshed character. Kiran Malik, playing Mehr and Adnan Jaffer, playing her husband Hassan, leave much to be desired in their ultimately mediocre performances and unconvincing relationship dynamics.
Director Shazia Ali Khan strives to offer an understanding, though perhaps limited, of the social construction of life in Dubai, but falls into several repetitive patterns that constraint the evolution of the storyline as well as the characters. Perhaps owing to the low budget and independent status of the film, it resorted to several generic stylistic as well as narrative techniques that made the film an almost bland affair. Several shots, primarily consisting of increasingly claustrophobic close ups, seem to utilize very little creative imagination.
As though picked out from a catalogue of shots in a Film Making 101 class, the camera angles and cinematography provides very little space for experimentation. Mehr, a beautiful socialite, for example, is introduced to the audience through extended long shots of her legs, body-fitting dress and ostentatious heels, cat walking up a staircase with sultry jazz playing as the scene score—as though borrowed straight from a Bond film. But perhaps the greatest injustice is the assembly of flat characters that offer very little nuance, if any at all. For a story about self-discovery and finding one’s way through the mesh of misunderstandings and heartbreak, it extends very little effort towards the very characters it claims to evolve.
It may be fair to say, however, that what the film lacked most was a sense of closure. While most scenes seem to start off well, they ultimately wind down endlessly through a drab narrative that attempts to tie together loose threads, but only ends up adding more tangents to a film already pregnant with them. Hence, sitting through the two hours of the film (that could have used more editing), there is no definite sense of completeness.
It is necessary to note, however, that Pinky Memsaab is in no way a bad film, rather a commendable directorial debut that it finds itself constantly falling short of what it is supposedly trying to do. It stays within the limits of safe, generic film making but seeks to propound a confusing concoction of social commentary on several varying issues that unfortunately, build towards nothing more than an empty promise of a pay off.
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