Screenwriter and producer Jemima Goldsmith has revealed that she came upon the idea to make the film ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ after living in Pakistan and observing arranged marriage committees, which would look for spouses for people.
“The film kind of started as a joke with my friends who were in their thirties, when i came back to the UK after having lived in Pakistan in those years,” Jemima said on Australian show Project TV.
“My ex-husband’s family is quite conservative so I lived in a joint family household. I lived with his father, his sisters, their husbands and kids. There were about 24 of us, living under the same house, and all our kids,” she revealed about her marriage to former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Jemima and the cricket hero divorced in _ after __ years of marriage.
“I did get to see arranged marriages up close, long term ones and ones that were arranged that I was on the committee for. And some of them were like surprisingly, to me, with my pre-conceptions, happy and successful. So when I came back in my thirties, my friends were at the point where they were hoping to settle down, have kids, get married, maybe not get married. We would say if you had seen functional parents..who would they choose for you and would it work? And it became a conversation point, and I think there’s quite a lot to be said for like simmer then boil and walking into love or falling in love. And the idea that they always used to say ‘Love comes at the end of the beginning of marriage’, which is a completely different point of view,” she said.
Jemima also described the film as ‘the rom-com Pakistan’, showing the colorful, vibrant side of the country that Western audiences don’t often see on the screen
“It’s the rom-com Pakistan aside from the darkness of politics. It’s the jazz-hands version of Pakistan. Which is nice to show because you don’t often kind to see the colorful, vibrant Pakistan we’re much more used to seeing Pakistanis and Pakistan as a kind of darker place on our screens particularly in the US and the UK.. So it’s nice to show the version of Pakistan that I grew to love.”
‘What’s Love Got To Do With?’ releases in cinemas on 24th February.
You can watch the full interview below:
