The first two-thirds of Iman Qureshi’s cheerful comedy about a lesbian choir could translate wholesale into a feelgood British film, like The Full Monty or Military Wives. The last chunk has a harder edge: most of the mismatched characters get a moment in the spotlight to express passionate views on the ways race, disability, and transexual rights impact on the lives of queer women. The plotting and characterisation are heavy handed and Hannah Hauer-King’s production isn’t exactly subtle, but altogether it’s a charming, funny and inclusive piece of work, augmented by uplifting a capella versions of songs ranging from Carmina Burana to Petula Clark’s Downtown.
It begins with Kibong Tanji’s broadband engineer Lori fixing the router of Lara Sawalha’s Dina, a rich but aggressively flirtatious Qatari with an overbearing husband and two children. Dina suspects she is gay and wants to meet women: by chance, Lori is about to be dragged to a lesbian singing session by her partner Ana (Claudia Jolly), in a bid to save a relationship that’s at the tricky seven-year mark. Lori is black and hasn’t come out to her churchgoing family, while Ana is white, bisexual, and a lecturer in post-colonialism and queer studies. See what I mean about the clunkiness?
