Lips don't lie

So after 80-odd minutes of haan and naa, if and but, they are finally indulging in some not-a-care-in-the-world public display of affection on a neighbourhood park bench. They catch a kid playing with his mother nearby and Tala (Lisa) tells Leyla (Sheetal): “You need a bigger apartment because I have told my parents we will have children soon.”

It’s this kind of constant attempt at political correctness and sentimental simplification that stops Shamim Sarif’s I Can’t Think Straight short of being a really good film. It has some lovely moments of tenderness and a few beautifully paced scenes of uncomfortable shifting but then you have this uneasy feeling that the director had the zillions of lesbian and gay film festivals in mind while writing the movie.

Can’t a same-sex love story survive just on love? Why does it always have to be justified, explained, placed on a taboo turf, and treated as a war being waged against the world? Why co-relate it with Israelis butchering aam junta in Jordan? Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together or Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is great cinema because they treat the romance between their gay protagonists like any other love story — from its genesis to its catharsis.

In the way I Can’t Think Straight takes off, in the way the West Asian marriage-phobic Tala and the confused South Asian girl Leyla start getting close to each other, you sense a cold calculation. They are plotting it out in their heads before making their next move. To quote a very filmi line from a very heterosexual Bollywood movie: Pyaar sochke nahin kiya jaata... bas ho jaata hai.

Anyway, Leyla watches Tala play polo, Tala reads Leyla’s unpublished writings. They take a trip to Oxford and after drifting around a few sculptures, they do a little West Asian tango before jumping into bed. The morning after, Leyla is a liberated soul having discovered her true sexuality while Tala, who always seemed the more worldly-wise, stronger woman, recoils saying: “We can’t live like this.”

That is the best bit of Shamim Sarif’s film. It shows a natural aftermath of a racy relationship born out of a desperate quest. The immediate effect and its long-term impact. What’s not so hot is the way the caricatures called parents and siblings loom around large in the background. They look out of place not only in the way they think but the way they carry themselves.

The two women are good. Sheetal, a regular desi girl in foreign productions, brings the right amount of vulnerability. Lisa is gorgeous with a capital G even if she goes over the top in a few scenes. [All those college kids at the morning show at INOX (Forum) came just for her. They, and we, hope Lisa fights the rare bone marrow cancer she is suffering from and comes out a winner.]

It’s a pity, though, that when as a censor board you allow a lesbian film to release in India and give it an ‘A’ rating, why cut away the sex scenes and show us mere museum sculptures?

Think straight, big brother, and get rid of those scissors!


Pratim D. Gupta, t2