A self-righteous wail from behind the purdah

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Bol is a disturbing, and at times nauseatingly self-righteous, wail from behind the purdah, drawing attention to muffled dreams, bypassed and yet restive lives.

Heavy? Well, the film is heavy. Most of it, anyway. Bol has a few light moments — some rather lovely and some seriously jarring, but it is here in our midst to make a point. And to make its point it picks a journey that seems needlessly grim and contrived.
In a haveli in Lahore, lives a family of Mujahirs. It’s not so much a house as a garrison. Only the male members are let out, the women stay inside. Father (Manzar Sehbai) is a god-fearing hakim who goes to work at his dawakhana and returns home to have a meal with his wife, five daughters and one boy, Saifi, (Amr Kashmiri), who is a hermaphrodite. Hakim saab wanted to kill Saifi when he was born and can’t bear to look at him even now.
Zainab (Humaima Malick), hakim saab’s eldest daughter, was married but has left her husband and returned home. She is the film’s protagonist, and the voice that will deliver a vital message to the world via TV cameras as her last wish before she is hanged till death. And that message is this: “Marna hi gunah kyun hai, paida karna gunah kyun nahin hai?”
The film’s first half, which is mainly about Saifi, the lonely boy on the terrace who likes wearing women’s clothes and lipstick and is developing feelings for his other sister
Ayesha’s boyfriend
Mustafa (Atif Aslam), is beautiful. This helpless, innocent boy who lives in a room on the terrace — a gorgeous room full of mirrors on the ceiling with miniature paintings on the walls — can only paint. So that’s what his sisters send him out to do, but with tragic results.
The film’s second half is a clumsy journey to the gallows and the vital question via a stunning tawaif’s kotha, an illegitimate child, a murder case, a rock concert and a romance. Iman Ali plays tawaif Meera with pluck and grace, and Amr Kashmiri is superb. Humaima Malick is affected and doesn’t really look the part. Manzar Sehbai plays her father and he is unforgettable.
The film’s messages, and there are several, are important, but Shoaib Mansoor, who made the brilliant Khuda Kay Liye, seems very attached to misery here. My biggest problem with Bol is that in the end, when all are free and liberated, the fruits of freedom that they seek are so trivial and mundane, almost as if plucked from a silly lifestyle magazine, that if the mood wasn’t so homely it’d be downright offensive.