‘The Queen of My Dreams’ Review: A Familiar Tale of Diaspora Tensions

variety.com:

Siddhant Adlakha A narrative trifurcated across decades and generations, Fawzia Mizra’s “The Queen of My Dreams” follows a young Pakistani Canadian coming to terms with her upbringing.

It hits all the familiar beats of a first-generation South Asian story and, despite its novel queer bent and tongue-in-cheek casting (actress Amrit Kaur plays protagonist Azra, as well as the character’s own mother in flashbacks), it does little to separate itself, thematically or stylistically, from a now repetitive form of “third culture” storytelling.

The sound of a slide projector yanks the film’s opening images into place, as though it were a slideshow of family memories.

The year is 1999. The place is Toronto. Azra is a wannabe actress — a profession of which her mother disapproves. She lives with her white, female “roommate” (her parents are none the wiser), to whom she excitedly shows the 1969 Hindi classic “Aradhana” starring Sharmila Tagore. “The Queen of My Dreams” is an English translation of the title of that movie’s most famous song, “Meri Sapno Ki Rani,” which plays numerous times in Mirza’s film, alongside re-enactments in which characters imagine themselves in the roles of Tagore and heartthrob Rajesh Khanna.