Unicorns (2024, dirs. Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd)

by Jack Martin | Jul 5, 2024

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 120 mins

UK Distributor: Signature Entertainment

UK Release Date: 5 July 2024

WHO’S IN UNICORNS?

Ben Hardy, Jason Patel, Hannah Onslow, Nisha Nayar, Michael Karim, Sagar Radia, Ravin J Ganatra, Ali Afzal, Val The Brown Queen, Jaimie Tank, Anthony Pius, Saba Shiraz, Miss Jalebi Bebe, Adeel Ahmed, Grant Davis, Madelyn Smedley, Kate Lindsey, Dan Linney, Karen Sampford, Angela Phinnimore, Karen Bartholomew, Jenny O’Leary, Taylor Sullivan, Aqeel Torres

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

James Krishna Floyd (director, writer), Sally El Hosaini (director), Philip Herd, Bill Pohlad, Celine Rattray, Kim Roth, Trudie Styler and Christa Zofcin Workman (producers), Stuart Earl (composer), David Raedeker (cinematographer), Iain Kitching (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A hardened mechanic (Hardy) falls in love with a drag queen (Patel)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON UNICORNS?

As many LGBTQ+ narratives have proven, love can be found in the least likely of places, and between the most unlikely people. In Brokeback Mountain, two cowboys unexpectedly fell in love in the mountains of Wyoming. In Carol, a meek department store clerk fell hard for the older divorcee of the title. And in My Beautiful Laundrette, a young British-Pakistani man developed a relationship with a racist thug.

There is more than a hint of the latter in Unicorns, the directorial debut of actor James Krishna Floyd (who co-directs with Sally El Hosaini, formerly of My Brother the Devil and The Swimmers), which similarly tells a story of two souls – one a hardened man of the streets, the other a free spirit of South Asian descent – that find each other in a world where such a union is all too frequently dismissed in less tolerant societies. While nobody opens up a laundrette in this particular film, there is much more of the tenderness and unspoken optimism that originally drove that British classic, which is one of the many things that make Unicorns a rather lovely and even euphoric romance.

The film follows Luke (Ben Hardy), a working-class auto mechanic working at his father’s garage, and a single father to his young son Jamie (Taylor Sullivan), who’s beginning to act out at school due to the absence of his mother Emma (Hannah Onslow). After an all-too casual sexual encounter with another woman, Luke finds himself stumbling into a secret nightclub where he encounters, and becomes immediately mesmerised by, a dancer named Aysha (Jason Patel). They flirt and even make out a little, but upon realising that “she” is not exactly who he had thought, Luke recoils in horror. However, Aysha – the drag queen persona of young Muslim man Ashiq – soon comes back into Luke’s life to ask if he can transport her to various gigs around London and the surrounding areas, bringing the two of them closer together as they each navigate their sexualities and ultimately discover who they are meant to be.

In addition to the hard-hitting romance, there are numerous cultural pockets that Floyd (who also wrote the film’s script) and El Hosaini manage to explore which all help to make said romance all the more palatable. The filmmakers pay particular attention to the “gaysian” scene that Aysha/Ashiq belongs to, an underrepresented LGBTQ+ subculture that allows queer-identifying South Asians to fully express themselves in ways that even the more mainstream gay communities might not allow. The gaysian community is presented with as much lovingly camp energy, but sadly also as much underlying danger (Aysha is shown to receive so many death threats via text that she’s become numb to their impact), as any other queer pocket out there, which both Floyd and El Hosaini work to humanise to their fullest extent, and provide a comfortable backdrop for not just Jason Patel’s Aysha to feel at home within, but also for Ben Hardy’s Luke to learn more about and ultimately become enamoured by the culture that his love interest belongs to.

Both Hardy and Patel are excellent, sharing a believable chemistry with each other that really makes you want to see these unlikely lovers end up together, and as the film progresses there are some noticeable personality shifts that feel satisfying in how they are earned, which in part is down to Floyd’s script fleshing out these characters to avoid them falling into easy archetypes. Much of it, though, is because these performances are deeply passionate, especially Jason Patel who is a surefire star in the making as he radiates confidence and charisma without any of it feeling forced, especially as Aysha who’s such a lively and charming presence that she even declares her pronouns to be “icon and legend” – not exactly far off from how one would describe Patel in this movie.

Above all, the film works as not only an endearing love story, but also as a tender and heartfelt exploration of what it is to be ourselves, especially in the vicinity of less accepting loved ones. Luke, for instance, comes from a hardened Essex community that prides itself in its overly machismo and occasionally misogynist characteristics (whilst out with friends, Luke witnesses one of them reduce their fiancé to near sickness after blowing smoke into her mouth), aspects of which have clearly rubbed off on him and even his impressionable young son. Aysha, comparatively, has it much harder, since in addition to facing scrutiny for both her sexuality and racial heritage, as Ashiq he cannot seem to fully approach his family in Manchester when his conservative father is around, with even his more loving mother resisting the urge to fully accept him for who he is.

The fact that both Luke and Aysha are able to come together at all (quite literally, during one particularly intimate love scene), in spite of their vastly different yet similarly unaccepting backgrounds, is a testament to their resilience toward those archaic societal norms in their never-ending quest to accept themselves. Most notably, as things take a turn for the melodramatic later on in the film, there is a powerful sense of passion between them, even when things seem hopeless, which is in its own way very romantic, arguably more than most other heterosexual love stories to be released this year.

It’s a wonderful and exceptionally heartfelt film that, once again, proves that no matter the background or the situation, love finds constant ways to sneak into one’s life.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Unicorns is a wonderful and euphorically romantic exploration of self-acceptance within the underrepresented “gaysian” community, which filmmakers Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd portray with warm humanity, and lead actors Ben Hardy and Jason Patel convey through their uplifting chemistry. Like an actual unicorn, it’s a real rarity.