In which I go to the cinema

Last night I saw a film called Slackistan at the ICA. I'd read a couple glowing reviews about this movie, made last year about the lives of a clique of young trustafarians in the years following their graduation from university - Reality Bites set in Islamabad. If it had been set in Detroit or Manchester, I'd be laying into it: the script is more dire than Knopfler, wincingly bad; the camera work suggests a work experience project; the sound and lighting are awful. The soundtrack is hideously clunky too - songs about love at moments about love, songs about heartbreak at moments about heartbreak - and even though I was briefly distracted by the breathtakingly handsome leading man, no one is gorgeous enough to hide the fact that the cast's acting makes Bennie Hill look like Marlon Brando.

But this wasn't made in Detroit or Manchester, it was made in Islamabad, and with as little patronising generosity as possible, I'd say that makes it a bit different. Despite all the crappiness, I still enjoyed it and certainly learned a lot from story, which showed a far more liberal, Westernised portrait of the city than I'd imagined - not necessarily a positive picture at all, but very different to my preconceptions, and lord knows it's important we challenge those as much as possible.

The sold-out central London cinema was full of youngish Asians and what interested me was that the environment in the auditorium was WAY more like seeing a film in Mumbai than just off Pall Mall. Girls were gasping and giggling at crucial plot points, bad jokes received huge belly laughs, people wandered in and out frequently and mobile phones were checked every few minutes. There was definitely the frisson of a special communal event and it served as a stark reminder to me that the young, westernised, Pakistani community in London rarely, if ever, see films about their Pakistani peers. It must be seriously odd to be so under-represented by the culture of the country in which you were born and have grown up. My parents are immigrants too, but with American and Scottish roots, I don't feel like my cultural past is particularly elusive.

Anyway. I'm glad I saw it.

I'm not doing anything tonight which is lucky, as my hair is so dirty that if I took out the four pins holding it off my face, it would stay put - except if I stood with the wind blowing on my back, in which case the whole structure would flip inside out and my face would be stuck in a tunnel of my own lank barnet. Sometimes I think it is extraordinary that I am not pursued down the street by hoardes of gift-carrying wooers. Today is not one of those days.