I CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT
This feel good lesbian rom com lacks comic variations but is powered by strong performance
by Vishal Verma

A Regent Releasing / Here Films (in U.S.) release of an Enlightenment production.

Produced by : Hanan Kattan
Executive producers : Kelly Moss, Lisa Tchenguiz-Imerman, Mervyn Wilson
Directed by : Shamim Sarif
Screenplay : Sarif, Kelly Moss from the novel by Sarif
Genre : Lesbian rom com
Target Audience : Metros & metropolitans

Starring

Lisa Ray
Sheetal Sheth
Antonia Frering
Amber Rose Revah
Rez Kempton
Anya Lahiri
Siddiqua Akhtar
Daud Shah.

Technical Analysis

Novelist/filmmaker Shamim Sharif's lesbian romantic comedy, “ I Can,t think Straight’ is a fairly routine story of newfound lesbian rapture told with draggy melodrama and general overemphasis. The Sapphic couple in Sharif’s “The World Unseen” Ray & Seth gets together here to generate enough hot-blooded believability to temper the blatant over-simplications in this London-set cross-cultural love story.

However, the striking actresses Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth, provide some needed emotional buoyancy to an otherwise unsuccessful attempt to merge hazardous sexual identity with turbulent world politics. Certainly co-writer/director Shamim Sarif approaches the film from an empathic perspective. The film is nothing if not sensitive to the relatable puzzles of the heart and assorted personal matters of sexual preference. It's a standard coming out tale, replete with disapproving parents and constipated professions of love, only the waters are muddied by the presence of geopolitical concerns, centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the film is billed as "Just another British, Indian, Muslim, Arab, Christian, lesbian Romantic Comedy") and how it informs some hostility between Leyla and Tala.

The chatter about international relations doesn't smother "Straight," but it's enough of a distraction to wonder what grand plan Sarif had in mind for the persistent subplot. Talk of Middle East politics seems out of place in a lesbian discovery tale.

The actresses are appealing & strikingly beautiful and they provide the film with a loving romantic temperament. Like the rest of the performers, the screenplay fails the leads, with Sarif's direction compounding the headache when the film takes a breakneck turn toward soap opera territory.

‘I Can,t think Straight’ is another fail attempt by Sarif to translate the novel into a film.

The movie gets 2 out of 5

Both for the lovely actress Lisa Ray & Sheetal Sheth

The movie losses points on its swinging focus & unnecessarily adding politics to the theme.

The Story

In the upper echelons of traditional Middle Eastern society, Reema and Omar prepare for the marriage of their daughter Tala (Lisa Ray). But back at work in London, Tala encounters Leyla (Sheetal Sheth) , a young British Indian woman who is dating Tala's best friend Ali. Tala sees something unique in the artless, clumsy, sensitive Leyla who secretly works to become a writer. And Tala's forthright challenges to Leyla's beliefs begins a journey of self-awareness for Leyla. As the women fall in love, Tala's own sense of duty and cultural restraint cause her to pull away from Leyla and fly back to Jordan where the preparations for an ostentatious wedding are well under way. As family members descend and the wedding day approaches, the pressure mounts until Tala finally cracks and extricates herself. Back in London, Leyla is heartbroken but learns to break free of her own self-doubt and her mother's expectations, ditching Ali and being honest with her parents about her sexuality. When Ali and Leyla's feisty sister Zara help throw Tala and Leyla together again, Tala finds that her own preconceptions of what love can be is the final hurdle she must jump to win Leyla back

Business Analysis

This feel good lesbian rom com is draggy & lacks funny variations even the striking charm of Lisa Ray & her partner in the movie Sheetal Sheth will fail to attract much legs to the theatres.

Other Credits

Camera (color), Aseem Bajaj; editor, David Martin; music, Raiomondo Mirza; production designer, Katie Lee Carter; costume designer, Charlie Knight; sound (Dolby Digital), Roger Johnson; sound designer, David Martin, Rajendha Hegde; associate producers, Daisy Allsop, Aida Kattan. Reviewed at Eros Mini Theatre, Mumbai on September 09, 2009. Running time: 82 MIN.

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