Disclaimer: this post was written for a Gender & World Cinema course at a State University.
In a national culture where women’s fate is left in the hands of men, Mumtaz has only one wish: to work. While this wish is temporarily obtained, Mumtaz is met with a reality that many women face, including her sister-in-law, in which their life and autonomy is limited to cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. The femininity of women who seek work outside of the home is illegible in a Pakistani culture that expects them to perform exclusively domestic labor.
Previously the provider in the relationship, Mumtaz is forced to quit her job after her husband, Haider, accepts a position as a background dancer for Biba, a transgender woman, at a local dance club. A unique camera angle displays only the back of Mumtaz’s long, curly hair as the family around her, namely the men, discuss her fate as a newfound stay-at-home wife. In this moment, Mumtaz is diminished to little more than a woman — a woman whose sole purpose is to work in the home.
Mumtaz’s once explicit fight to keep her job turns silent as her resentment for the domestic life that she has been assigned to grows. As she speaks with Nucchi about their past careers and aspirations — both of which were abandoned by the men in their lives — the domestic labor seems to fight back, with wind whipping laundry into Mumtaz’s face as she attempts to hang it dry; if no one else can see that Mumtaz is silently suffering in her new role, at least her chores will give her a fight. This is not the life that Mumtaz wished for when she married into Haider’s family.
While Mumtaz remains at home, Haider and Biba spend countless hours working together, leading to a torrid affair. As if forcing Mumtaz to quit her job was not enough, Haider develops an emotional and physical relationship with Biba, who is able to bend the legibility fields of being a woman in Pakistan. As a transgender woman whose gender and sexuality are not openly identifiable by her peers, Biba is not constrained by the same demands as Mumtaz or the other women in Pakistan. Instead, Biba works daily (and nightly, if she chooses), only returning home to her community after she is satisfied with her day of work. But this ability to flow in-and-out of gender conformity does not only come with benefits. Biba is berated on numerous occasions and her gender is questioned and challenged throughout the film regarding her status as a “real woman.”
As distance grows between Mumtaz and Haider, so does the distance between Mumtaz and herself — who she once was. Rather than rejoicing in the news that she is pregnant (a boy, which Haider is praised for), Mumtaz’s ability to feel joy has become so diminished that she can barely fake a smile. The early, carefree Mumtaz seen at the beginning of the film slowly dissipates, and her harrowing sadness is undetected by those around her who simply see her as a woman fulfilling her domestic duties.
The striking difference between Mumtaz and Biba’s identities highlight Pakistan’s overall issue of the legibility and illegibility of women. Women who display agency are either stripped of their autonomy in order to be seen as legible or are ridiculed and undermined, seen as illegible. When women are placed in a box that determines what they can and cannot do, they are met with the choice of remaining trapped in domestic servitude or death.