Mazhar Moin | Plum Cake / 2023

a mother discovers her son

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shah Yasir (screenplay), Mazhar Moin (director) Plum Cake / 2023 [18 minutes]

 

This 2018 short film by Pakistani director Mazhar Moin, presents a mother (Hamza Abbasi), represented well in East Asian cinema, who adores her son, but also clearly attempts to control his life. The son, Robert (Fouzia Nasir Ahmad), moreover, is a rather passive boy given the total, loving control she has exerted over him. Despite her insistent attempts to marry him off to a “beautiful” girl, who is the daughter of one of the dear friends of her sister Christine.

     In truth, Robert is in deep love with his best friend Usman (Ahman Kahn Bhatti), who stays at the house many a night, always suggesting that the two were watching movies before falling asleep. His mother adores Usman, who often arrives with special food, helps the mother cut up her onions—a job which despite her devotion to housework, she hates—and is generally loving and caring about her, without realizing the role he plays in their daily life.

     She is surprised, however, to hear that he will soon be moving away, without recognizing her own role in his decision.

      The mother is also a devout Roman Catholic who attends services each week with her always obedient son, who dares not speak out against her powerful demands, and the endless lover she has apparently always poured upon him. She finally determines an occasion where he will meet up with his new fiancée.

    But meanwhile, the two men continue to sleep together under her own roof, one morning Usman showing up with what looks to be a “hickey,” but which he insists is just a mosquito bite, which she lovingly, as always, warns him against.

      Finally, the day has arrived for the meeting, but as early the next morning she makes goes into her son’s room to make up his bed, she discovers a condom wrapper in his wastepaper basket, and suddenly the truth of the situation hits her painfully.

      She calls her friend, cancelling her son’s meeting with her daughter, arguing that he does not truly deserve her. It also seems apparent that she has a conversation about the situation with her local priest.

      But this is a mother who has spent her entire life loving and caring after her son. And despite her great pain, she still makes the plum cake she has promised. She cuts out a piece, as the film closes, choosing love still over her disgust and pain for what she now realizes about Robert’s sexuality.

      Whether Usman will now remain is almost beside the point; if nothing else, the always loving mother now recognizes that her view of son was a mistaken one, and she must come to terms with him just as he has come, long ago, to accept her vision of the world. Real love often requires new perspectives.

   Perhaps together they can even convince Usman that he remain in their sense of familial love and need not escape their grasp for fear of his own future. This movie, however, is not about familial happiness but about its deep love that sometimes goes against our greatest expectations for one another. The plum cake becomes almost a peace offering.

 

Los Angeles, September 19, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).