There is no price worth ignoring the value of your daughter
This review is my opinion and contains spoilers.
“Could you have protected your reputation if your sister’s wedding was called off?”
“Load Wedding” is a 2018 Pakistani film directed by Nabeel Qureshi, who would go on to direct “Actor-in-Law” and “Qaid-e-Azam Zindabad.” The rom-com has an all-star cast of Fahad Mustafa, Faiza Hasan, Mehwish Hayat, Samina Ahmad, and Om Puri, among others. It tries to balance entertainment and seriousness, but what is often seen in South Asian cinema, the first hour is comedic with some social commentary, and the second delves deeper into societal issues (there is what feels like a ten-minute monologue on the injustice of dowry). The film has important things to say, even though it does little to address its fatphobic bits. Following his father’s passing, Raja (Fahad Mustafa) is responsible for arranging his older sister’s Baby (Faiza Hasan) wedding, requiring Raja to put off his own. The first half is the romantic comedy, laced with an uncomfortable amount of normalized fatphobia. Already under financial duress, the family is pressured to increase the dowry they can offer Baby’s prospective in-laws. Characters constantly blame Baby for not losing weight, which is why she has been unable to find a match. Her childish nature seems exacerbated by every shaming of her body and her unmarried status. This frustration makes her and her mother (Samina Ahmad) focus on the only thing they can control: Raja’s savings. His mother and sister both throw fits when Raja wants to marry his childhood crush, Meerab (Mehwish Hayat), but Raja’s suicide attempt gets his mother to agree to his wedding. Baby is not happy.
Baby disrupts Raja and Meerab on their wedding night and joins them on their honeymoon. She fears Raja will use his savings on his children and forget her dowry. Meerab feels the only way to resolve the situation is to go on a game show and win prizes (a laundry machine with a generator, a car, a 20-karat gold brick) to give as dowry. When she’s successful, the wedding proposals flow in, with one family’s list of requests detailing everything but the car. On the wedding night, the prizes disappear. The wedding is canceled unless Raja promises to raise 2 million lakhs and the car. Raja sells everything, even his bike, yet still needs to catch up. Meerab gets the host of the game show to provide the same prizes as dowry in exchange for televising the marriage and exposing the issue of dowry from the prospective in-laws and society. Raja makes a monologue about how families see their daughters as products. They can only marry their daughter with giving her a motorcycle or money. Instead of asking if the in-laws would be satisfied with the amount, families should ask if their daughters will be happy with the boy. People of different backgrounds in Pakistan watch the broadcast, with fathers seeming morose, husbands looking uncomfortable, and so many women sitting apart from their families, glued to the screen and resonating with the message. The wedding is called off, and immediately after, the wedding party chases the prospective in-laws out of the tent. Baby is shown as the most aggressive in her family, slapping her guilty fiancee. The film ends with Baby in a wedding picture next to the narrator, Raja’s best friend.
The film’s social commentary is varied, primarily on love’s importance. Raja fights against stigma in marrying Meerab, who is shown to face discrimination at a wedding because she is a widow. It takes Raja time before he can tell his sister that she should marry out of love (which he still doesn’t say directly to her, but to the camera for broadcast). It’s complicated as to whether Raja had also believed that his sister should seek out marriage on her own terms or if Raja didn’t care about how his sister’s wedding would pan out, just that Raja expected he would have to provide dowry in any case. However, the film does not show that he requested a dowry for his wedding. It may have had more to do with Raja trying to fulfill the duties of what was expected of him. His mother seems to press the idea of an arranged wedding into his mind, as this is what she’s been seeking for Baby. The mother isn’t shown to have a noticeable change in perspective until she agrees that the family should proceed with the broadcast, supposedly knowing full well what the consequences might be (this is as obvious as she gets).
If one is looking for what one expected to see in a South Asian movie, Load Wedding provides that with its production value and soundtrack. But it’s only in a Pakistani movie that I’ve seen a love song around and outside Sufi temple.
You can watch Load Wedding on Prime.