Pebble-dashed with rhinestones, teetering on Lucite heels and topped with an ice-cream-whip wig, non-binary British-Palestinian drag artist Layla (a terrific, tender turn by Bilal Hasna) has a look that embraces artifice. But Layla is no fake: they are magnificently and authentically themself, down to the last set of inch-long tinsel lashes.
It’s not without a cost, this hard-won personal truth. Layla has found their tribe – and it’s here that first-time director Amrou Al-Kadhi, also a drag artist, excels, capturing the sparkling, sensual spectacle of the queer club circuit, a second home for Layla’s gang, and also the fiercely protective love that binds together this chosen family. But Layla has another family – the caring yet conservative Muslim parents who still know them as Latif, and a sister who can’t understand why she is being kept at arm’s length. Here, the parallels with Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd’s recent “gaysian” drag romance Unicorns are particularly conspicuous, although Layla is less about making peace with the past than it is about staying true to the present.
