Welsh-Egyptian film-maker Sally El Hosaini made a supremely confident debut in 2012 with My Brother the Devil, about a young gay Muslim drug dealer in Hackney. After following up with last year’s refugee drama The Swimmers, she is back exploring queer south Asian culture. Co-directing Unicorns with James Krishna Floyd (the star of My Brother the Devil), who wrote the script, El Hosaini brings a streak of hopefulness to gritty social realism, with the added attraction of superstar drag queens.
At the centre of the film are a pair of heartfelt performances. Ben Hardy is Luke, a straight white mechanic struggling to bring up his five-year-old son as a single dad. One night, Luke accidentally finds himself on the dancefloor of a gay Asian – “gaysian” – club night and kisses drag queen Aysha (Jason Patel), thinking she’s a cis woman. When he realises she’s not, Luke is appalled. But Aysha is smitten, and hires him to drive her to private gigs. Aysha dances at gay house parties where the security is heavy: entry by password only, bouncers on the door. Aysha explains to Luke the risks of being out, showing him death threats on her phone: “Die bitch!” (The film is executive produced by Muslim drag queen Asifa Lahore, and I wondered how much these glimpses into a gay south Asian party scene are inspired by real life).
Luke is not exactly woke; comatose is more like it. “What are you, a tranny?” he asks Aysha early on. She corrects him sharply: “Don’t ever use that word again. I’m a drag queen. My only pronouns are icon and legend.” There’s something so optimistic in the film’s outlook, in the way that, by spending time with Aysha, Luke overcomes his ingrained prejudices and romance blossoms. Not that this guarantees a happy ending. In the second half, the perspective switches more to Aysha, as she goes back home to her parents in Manchester, as their son Ashiq. I found these scenes slightly more compelling; maybe that’s down to Patel’s warm, open performance, which is the beating heart of the film. That said, drag queen Val the Brown Queen, playing Aysha’s BFF, steals practically every scene she appears in.