SOLO begins with a friendly therapy session focusing on intimacy issues.  Atif Siddiqi’s self examination is both whimsical and funny.  As a performance and video artist, he revels in sharing his dreams and fantasies interspersed throughout the real-life dates, tango lessons and speed-dating sessions intended to hone his ability to find Mr. Right.  In someone else's hands, a clumsy attempted pick up at the local Laundromat wouldn't be as endearing. Such antics are par for the course for a film about love and finding a partner.

Siddiqi's light-hearted style of film-making is more than it appears. When real life, family history and personal traumas interfere with the fantasies and the delicate balancing act of Siddiqi's life seems to unravel before the lens, childhood memories take centre stage.  Our personal history insinuates itself into our lives as randomly as does love.  As adults, we must make sense of the puzzle of our childhood if we are to move forward.

From the demanding expectations of his traditional Pakistani family to the disclosures of early childhood sexual abuse. Siddiqi's therapy sessions bring to light the central themes that have dogged his adult life as a gay man.  Woven into the fabric of SOLO's fanciful bravado are the clues to Mr. Siddiqi's real joys and sorrows. The flights of fancy and poetic reverie, the mythological creations shaped from Indian, Greek and Egyptian gods and goddesses, all glitter with the promise of rebirth and renewal.

By melding documentary footage with personal history and performance art, SOLO honors the fragility of self discovery.  It sheds new light on the necessity for art and its saving grace.  It shows how personal demons must be faced in order to be free to trust ourselves and our partners enough to love.  In essence, SOLO is a celebration of one gay man's creative journey to self realization -- with or without Mr. Perfect.