Chris Knipp
07-19-2025, 07:05 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20ncrn.jpg
BEN HARDY, JASON PATEL IN UNICORNS
SALLY EL HUSEINI, JAMES KRISHNA FLOYD: UNICORNS (2023)
Mechanic meets drag queen
Unicorns is a lively dramatic exploration of identity, queer culture, and the relationship between a working class, straight white, single dad from Essex, southwest of London, and a professional drag performer of British Indian origin based in Manchester. It's also an example of relliably polished English filmmaking, exhibiting the way with a few good actors and good direction, manners and accents in a British film can be used satisfyingly to convey the nuances of class, custom and region and ways they can be blended and interwoven.
The Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/06/unicorns-review-sally-el-hosaini-james-krishna-floyd-ben-hardy-jason-patel#:~:text=It's%20an%20evocative%20visual%20lea p,the%20screenwriter%20of%20this%20film).)by Wendy Ide stresses how the monochrome world of Essex garage mechanic Luke (Ben Hardy) is transformed and set alight when he meets the colorful British Indian drag queen. What is it like to fall for a drag queen and then realize "she" wasn't quite the"she" you thought? Yes, it's encountering glamor, filigree, facade, then getting a shock, then, perhaps, coming to terms with the deception and realizing what he didn't understand still mysteriously, troublingly attracts him.
At the first meeting Luke takes Aysha away from a brawl. When she explains to him what it was about, he says it sounds complicated, but she answeres that it’s simply that “Everybody just wants what they can’t have.”
A key scene is where we see the excellent Jason Patel, as Ashaq, the quiet drugstore makeup counter employee by day living with his conservative family, totally making himself over to enter his other nighttime identity, hidden from his parents, as Aysha, bathing, shaving his whole body, making his skin look more glowing and glassy and smooth; then the makeup, then the wig, then the clohes, for the magic transformation. The personality behind Aysha is silky but also tough. It is a total transformation whose effort and accomplishment and magic we're shown.
There is a kiss, when the tough young garage mechanic, Luke, doesn't know he's kissing a drag queen. Then later Aysha comes to the garage where Luke works to beg him to give her a ride as he did the night they met - because as she said she does not drive - to go the gathering she wants to attend in another town. Her drag life involves these treks around the country. Luke has a boring, grimy sex life and the primary responsibility of raising a son, litle Jamie (Taylor Sullivan), who has a behavioral problem and gets called out for repeatedly kicking another boy in a school dispute.
In the case of Ben Hardy as Luke the transformations aren't elaborately physical like Jason Patel's but there are transfomratins seen in layers of emotion all reflected in his"everyday" face without makeup or glitter, with just a bit of washing up. Luke's changes are a thing of rapidly shifting emotons, a kaleidoscope of altering facial expressions, often quite subtle.
These two characters, Asaq/Aysha and Luke, who bond as she pays him to transport her to clubs or dates in different towns, make a striking combination, the odd couple, which fills the screen becaause of how fully Jason Patel and Ben Hardy realize their characters and make belieable the chemistry between the two characters they create. Through them the film has no trouble taking a deep, natural dive into the themes of self-discovery, acceptance, and fluid desire as they bond as "mates" and something much more.
Aysha is warned by her brother at one point that “people are saying things back in Manchester about you," and she she herself darkly remarks to Luke at one point that for closeted South Asian drag queens like her, “there’s only ever two outcomes, forced marriage abroad or jumping off a cliff." But the romance, the excitement, are there fror LUke and Aysha, who're both discovering something both in each other and in themselves with this affair.
True, we've seen these themes before. The tough, macho guy who becomes attracted to an exotic creature, a tough-and-tender drag queen is not new. But these actors are excellent and the backgrounds are convincing. The treatment is honest and sensible. As Angie Han points out in her Hollwood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/unicorns-ben-hardy-sally-el-hosaini-review-1235583707/) review, the film doesn't draw near defining lines around the two main characters, point some sort of trite moral, or come to any easy conclusion.
Unicorns, 119 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 8, 2023, showing aso at BRI London, Göteborg, later in 2024 at BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, Sydney, Rio, and Seoul, and released in the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Israel. Opening in the US July 18, 2025, expanding July 25.
BEN HARDY, JASON PATEL IN UNICORNS
SALLY EL HUSEINI, JAMES KRISHNA FLOYD: UNICORNS (2023)
Mechanic meets drag queen
Unicorns is a lively dramatic exploration of identity, queer culture, and the relationship between a working class, straight white, single dad from Essex, southwest of London, and a professional drag performer of British Indian origin based in Manchester. It's also an example of relliably polished English filmmaking, exhibiting the way with a few good actors and good direction, manners and accents in a British film can be used satisfyingly to convey the nuances of class, custom and region and ways they can be blended and interwoven.
The Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/06/unicorns-review-sally-el-hosaini-james-krishna-floyd-ben-hardy-jason-patel#:~:text=It's%20an%20evocative%20visual%20lea p,the%20screenwriter%20of%20this%20film).)by Wendy Ide stresses how the monochrome world of Essex garage mechanic Luke (Ben Hardy) is transformed and set alight when he meets the colorful British Indian drag queen. What is it like to fall for a drag queen and then realize "she" wasn't quite the"she" you thought? Yes, it's encountering glamor, filigree, facade, then getting a shock, then, perhaps, coming to terms with the deception and realizing what he didn't understand still mysteriously, troublingly attracts him.
At the first meeting Luke takes Aysha away from a brawl. When she explains to him what it was about, he says it sounds complicated, but she answeres that it’s simply that “Everybody just wants what they can’t have.”
A key scene is where we see the excellent Jason Patel, as Ashaq, the quiet drugstore makeup counter employee by day living with his conservative family, totally making himself over to enter his other nighttime identity, hidden from his parents, as Aysha, bathing, shaving his whole body, making his skin look more glowing and glassy and smooth; then the makeup, then the wig, then the clohes, for the magic transformation. The personality behind Aysha is silky but also tough. It is a total transformation whose effort and accomplishment and magic we're shown.
There is a kiss, when the tough young garage mechanic, Luke, doesn't know he's kissing a drag queen. Then later Aysha comes to the garage where Luke works to beg him to give her a ride as he did the night they met - because as she said she does not drive - to go the gathering she wants to attend in another town. Her drag life involves these treks around the country. Luke has a boring, grimy sex life and the primary responsibility of raising a son, litle Jamie (Taylor Sullivan), who has a behavioral problem and gets called out for repeatedly kicking another boy in a school dispute.
In the case of Ben Hardy as Luke the transformations aren't elaborately physical like Jason Patel's but there are transfomratins seen in layers of emotion all reflected in his"everyday" face without makeup or glitter, with just a bit of washing up. Luke's changes are a thing of rapidly shifting emotons, a kaleidoscope of altering facial expressions, often quite subtle.
These two characters, Asaq/Aysha and Luke, who bond as she pays him to transport her to clubs or dates in different towns, make a striking combination, the odd couple, which fills the screen becaause of how fully Jason Patel and Ben Hardy realize their characters and make belieable the chemistry between the two characters they create. Through them the film has no trouble taking a deep, natural dive into the themes of self-discovery, acceptance, and fluid desire as they bond as "mates" and something much more.
Aysha is warned by her brother at one point that “people are saying things back in Manchester about you," and she she herself darkly remarks to Luke at one point that for closeted South Asian drag queens like her, “there’s only ever two outcomes, forced marriage abroad or jumping off a cliff." But the romance, the excitement, are there fror LUke and Aysha, who're both discovering something both in each other and in themselves with this affair.
True, we've seen these themes before. The tough, macho guy who becomes attracted to an exotic creature, a tough-and-tender drag queen is not new. But these actors are excellent and the backgrounds are convincing. The treatment is honest and sensible. As Angie Han points out in her Hollwood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/unicorns-ben-hardy-sally-el-hosaini-review-1235583707/) review, the film doesn't draw near defining lines around the two main characters, point some sort of trite moral, or come to any easy conclusion.
Unicorns, 119 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 8, 2023, showing aso at BRI London, Göteborg, later in 2024 at BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, Sydney, Rio, and Seoul, and released in the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Israel. Opening in the US July 18, 2025, expanding July 25.