Star-crossed lovers are always ripe for the big screen — a fact understood well by filmmakers James Floyd and Sally El Hosaini with the vibrant if familiar Unicorns. Mechanic-meets-drag-queen isn’t yet part of the genre’s vernacular, but the film makes a fine case for this new couple to become part of the canon.
The tragic lovers here are mechanic and single dad Luke (Ben Hardy) and drag queen Aysha (Jason Patel). They meet in a club — a wordless, intoxicating encounter — before Luke notices the Adam’s apple of his object of affection and things get complicated. Perhaps this kind of point-blank prejudice feels a few years old in cinema, but it’s no less tragic in the real world.
Luke and Aysha individually are more compelling than the sum of their parts.
The film explores self-expression and the definition of family protection carefully, looking at what it means to shelter your children from harm across every age and circumstance. While Luke grapples with his responsibility as a father, navigating co-parenting and his own life as an adult, Aysha’s deeply traditional family values threaten to thwart everything she knows she and Luke could have.
Yet the dynamic of this romance retreads familiar ground: it’s another story about a gruff, reticent partner (Hardy does a fine job) who meets a firecracker dream girl, where everything goes well, until it doesn’t. Patel comes alive in moments of romantic ecstasy, his eyes carrying a world of possibility, but Luke and Aysha individually are more compelling than the sum of their parts. It feels like there is much more story to be told after the credits roll — but the will-they-won’t-they question somehow feels like the least important of all.