\n<\/p>\n
In\u00a0What\u2019s Love Got to Do With It?<\/em>, the new romantic comedy written and co-produced by\u00a0Jemima Khan<\/strong>, the traditional fairy tale has become obsolete. The protagonist, Zoe Stevenson (Lily James<\/strong>), is a documentary filmmaker whose romantic failures and perennial singledom mean that she\u2019s often being asked to babysit her friend\u2019s children. To get them to sleep she tells them revamped fairy tales, which invariably become pessimistic commentaries on the failings of modern love. The princes in Zoe\u2019s\u00a0Cinderella<\/em>\u00a0are either boring or obnoxious; the beast in her\u00a0Beauty<\/em> is a sexual predator; and when the titular amphibian in Zoe\u2019s\u00a0The Princess and the Frog<\/em>\u00a0asks to be freed from his unfortunate state, the princess tells him she isn\u2019t interested in fixing anyone but herself.<\/p>\n Though she doesn\u2019t feel comfortable calling the film a critique of modernity, Khan admits that she doesn\u2019t really know what \u201chappily ever after\u201d is supposed to mean in the modern world of dating apps and websites. \u201cI think that having too many options is potentially as problematic as having too few,\u201d she tells\u00a0Vanity Fair.<\/em>\u00a0\u201c[It] tends to make people feel that other human beings are disposable.\u201d<\/p>\n While Zoe struggles to navigate the pitfalls of 21st-century dating, the story takes a subversive turn when her neighbor and childhood friend, Kazim (Shazad Latif<\/strong>), reveals to her that he\u2019s delegated the business of finding a suitable spouse for him to his Pakistani parents. He\u2019s looking for a girl modern enough for him to relate to and traditional enough for his parents to approve of, but beyond that he presents himself as open to suggestion. As a philosophy, this puts him firmly at odds with his childhood friend\u2014for whom love can never be associated with compromise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Khan wrote the film inspired by the decade she spent living in Pakistan as the wife of cricketer turned politician\u00a0Imran Khan<\/strong>. While living in Lahore with Imran\u2019s extended family, she was able to observe many successful arranged marriages at close quarters. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that there\u2019s one right way to find love, but I do believe that it\u2019s really easy to kind of demonize other people\u2019s way of doing it,\u201d she says. \u201cI definitely do not subscribe to the idea that the arranged marriage candidate presented in most films that touch on this subject, particularly comedies, has to be the butt of the jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n Khan, a journalist and film producer who describes herself as equal parts cynic and romantic, moved back to Britain in 2004, when her marriage ended. Still just 30, she found herself surrounded by friends her own age who were looking to settle down and find partners to have children with. \u201cI kind of became the Pakistani auntie,\u201d she says. \u201cWho would your parents\u2014 imagine that you take away the component of lust and sexual chemistry and survey the options through the eyes of the people who know you best and love you most\u2014who would they select? And would that work out?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer is\u2014as far as the film is concerned\u2014that there\u2019s no way of knowing what will work out. Indeed, in Khan\u2019s cross-cultural romance, directed by\u00a0Shekhar Kapur<\/strong>, the pursuit of love becomes something of an existential burden, an assignment so necessary and yet so fraught with danger that it has spawned an entire industry of clich\u00e9s and matchmaking methodologies. Popular depictions, according to Khan, tend to elevate love into \u201cthis kind of almost transcendental kind of mystical thing that is going to complete us and give us everything\u2026and then you expect that from one person. I\u2019m not sure that that bodes well, because I don\u2019t know who can ever live up to that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n