Kamli (2022) Review: Desire, Guilt and Silence

Is Kamli worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Kamli is one of the most daring Pakistani films of recent years, a searching portrait of female desire and guilt carried by a fearless Saba Qamar. Sarmad Khoosat treats a subject mainstream Pakistani cinema has long avoided with seriousness and visual ambition, and the film’s best passages have a haunting, dreamlike power. The reservation is its style: Khoosat’s theatrical, symbol-heavy approach and deliberate pacing will feel hypnotic to some viewers and frustratingly opaque to others.

What is Kamli about?

Kamli centres on a woman living under the weight of a conservative community’s expectations, whose long-suppressed longing begins to stir and collide with her sense of religious duty and guilt. The drama unfolds less through plot than through mood, glances and silences, as the film traces how desire, shame and devotion become tangled inside one person.

The title itself, a Punjabi word for a woman driven mad, often by love, signals the film’s interest in how society labels women who feel too much. Sarmad Khoosat directs, with Saba Qamar in the lead. It is a Pakistani production in Urdu and runs 133 minutes.

Saba Qamar’s fearless centre

The film rests on Qamar, and she rises to it. Better known to many audiences for mainstream television and film roles, she gives a performance of striking interiority here, conveying a lifetime of restraint and a slowly surfacing hunger with remarkable economy. It is brave work in a film industry where such material is rarely explored so openly, and her intensity holds the screen even when the story itself grows elusive. Many regard it as the finest performance of her career.

Khoosat surrounds her with a restrained supporting cast, whose characters are drawn mostly in relation to the heroine’s inner life. That focus sharpens the portrait, though it leaves some secondary figures thin.

Khoosat’s theatrical, poetic eye

Khoosat, whose earlier film Zindagi Tamasha also tangled with faith and social judgement, favours a heightened, almost stage-like style. Compositions are carefully framed, often static and heavy with symbolism, and the film uses landscape and light to suggest what its characters cannot say aloud. The effect can be beautiful: scenes linger like tableaux, and the atmosphere of quiet surveillance, of women being constantly watched and judged, is palpable.

The script frames desire and faith not as simple opposites but as forces that feed each other, and the film’s refusal to moralise is one of its strengths. It neither punishes nor celebrates its heroine; it simply asks the audience to understand her.

Where the style gets in the way

The same qualities that make Kamli distinctive also limit it. The pacing is slow, and at over two hours the film’s elliptical storytelling tests patience; long stretches pass with little dramatic development. Some of its symbolism is heavy-handed, and the theatrical staging occasionally makes the emotions feel presented rather than lived. Viewers expecting a conventional drama with a clear narrative arc may find it frustrating, and the film’s divisive reputation is easy to understand.

Who should watch Kamli?

It is best for viewers who enjoy art-house cinema and slow, symbolic storytelling, and for anyone interested in how Pakistani film is tackling subjects of desire, faith and gender. Fans of Saba Qamar will find it essential. It deals with sexuality and religious guilt in a restrained, non-explicit way, and suits adult audiences.

If it speaks to you:

• Joyland, another bold 2022 Pakistani drama about desire and the constraints of family and society.
• Khamosh Pani, a landmark film about a woman’s inner life under rising social and religious pressure.
• Bol, Shoaib Mansoor’s more direct, melodramatic attack on patriarchal control over women.

The verdict

Kamli is an ambitious, often beautiful and deliberately challenging drama, anchored by Saba Qamar’s fearless performance and Sarmad Khoosat’s bold vision. Its slow pace and heavy symbolism will divide audiences, but for viewers willing to meet it on its own terms, it is a rewarding and significant work of Pakistani cinema.

Rating: 3.5/5