LUCID FORGE

It’s rare when two films can fit together perfectly, like puzzle pieces. Unless they’re sequels or companion pieces, chances are that works within a filmmaker’s canon will maintain a style but vary in theme and character. Not so with The World Unseen (opening November 7th) and I Can’t Think Straight (opening November 21st) , both written and directed by Indo-British director Shamim Sarif.

Actor Lisa Ray, who stars in both, says “it’s really hard to come by strong female characters and story, so one part of me was excited another part was nervous. It was different with each individual script, but they’re great stories, and two great, very different characters. I was happy she asked me to do both. It was a heartfelt journey, and
it was absolutely the opposite of anything I’d ever done before.”



Born to an Indian father and Polish mother, Ray grew up in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, and had planned on attending journalism school when she was sought out to do modeling work. She spent a decade in India, on the runways and in magazines, before moving to London to attend drama school. In 2001, Ray made her first film, Kasoor, a remake of the 1985 American thriller Jagged Edge; it put her in the stratosphere of Bollywood superstardom, and it also caught the attention of Canadian director Deepa Mehta, who cast her as a slippery escort in 2002’s appropriately-titled Bollywood/Hollywood. Ray worked with Mehta again in 2005 for Water, a film that explores the lives of a group of widows living in a Varanasi ashram in 1938.

With a raise of the eyebrows and a shrug, Ray sweeps aside any worries about being culturally stereotyped when it comes to roles. “I did a lot of other work, is non-ethnically specific,” she says, referring to the Canadian-made All-Hat, in which she plays a farm girl, “and a lot of the stuff I audition for isn’t specific either. On the flip side, I often hear, if it’s an Indian character, that I don’t look Indian enough.” Sarif agrees, adding “it depends on who you ask… you could pass for Middle Eastern!” Indeed, the character of Tala in I Can’t Think Straight is Jordanian.

“When I get asked, I say I’m a bit of everything,” says Ray.

“She’s a chameleon, in acting and in looks,” notes Sarif, with a big smile.

Ray says colour-blind casting is still a new notion in the acting world, but it’s case of “people getting used to the idea.” Referring to Sarif, she says “I see her as a great writer-director, and that’s not specific to culture, or to genre or orientation or gender.  The reason why we worked so well together has nothing to do with gender or any kind of ethnic issue. We relate because we have similar world-views, and that’s really what the reason was for working on these projects.”

In The World Unseen, Ray plays Miriam, the Indian wife of the abusive Omar (Parvin Dabas); a put-upon housewife and mother, Miriam carries a dangerous secret that is hinted at with subtlety and grace, thanks to Sarif’s clever direction, strong writing, and poignant framing. Despite being wildly different in style, I Can’t Think Straight carries a similar theme of “the love that dares not speak its name”, to quote Wilde, and the love scenes between Ray and fellow actor Sheetal Sheth, also in both films, are tender, subtle, and deeply compelling. Inspiration, says the director, came from a favourite film she’d seen years before.

“I remember seeing Desert Hearts years ago,” recalls Sarif, “and there’s an intense sex scene in that film. It was much more intense than you get in either The World Unseen or I Can’t Think Straight. It was done with no music whatsoever –all you could hear was the bodies shifting and the sheets and (the characters’) breathing, not in any kind of lascivious way but in a raw way. It was almost uncomfortable to watch, it was so intimate, but it was also beautiful. It struck me that I wanted to create a similar thing.”



Inspiration for Sarif runs deeper than film, however. Sarif hails from both Indian and South African descent. The World Unseen is based on her novel of the same name from 2004, which was the recipient of both the Betty Trask Award (given by the British Society of Authors) and the Pendleton May First Novel Award. It was partly inspired by her own experiences growing up in South Africa. Her second novel, Despite the Falling Snow, was hailed for its sensitive balance of love and tragedy, moving as it does between the difficult emotional terrains of love, abuse, and deception. She’s now at work finishing the novel for I Can’t Think Straight, which she’d started prior to filming. “I’d written five hundred pages for the book version, and then I stopped. I thought, truthfully, “How can I do this?” From there it went to writing the scripts, looking at the structure, finding the through line. Once I did, and we got financing, it went quickly after that. I never went back (to finishing the novel) after I finished movie, not until lately.” Writing with a bit of distance now, filming having long since wrapped up, Sarif seems to feel it’s an easier task. “It’s not something I think too hard about now,” she says casually.

While I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen share thematic similarities, not to mention parallels in casting, the two are wildly different stylistically; the former takes its cues from Bollywood, with a colourful, energetic joy, while the latter is comparatively sober, feeling like more of a meditation. Sarif says this “what the stories (of each)
demanded. When I did the script for I Can’t Think Straight, I was intentionally going for a light comedic style. I mean, the subject matter can get heavy, but I wanted to keep it light while keeping the emotional sensitivity between the girls intact. With (The World Unseen), it always had that epic emotional feel and sweep.”



Had she considered Ray as the lead for both projects? “No,” she laughs, sneaking a look at Ray as the actor smiles at her, “because I didn’t know Lisa or her work then. She’d barely started acting when I wrote the script. When writing novels, I don’t have a strong physical image of the characters. It frees me up as a director, so there are no preconceptions in casting. I have a strong sense of the characters’ value systems, and who they are, and what drives, them, but I’m not hung up on them physically.”

Still, the complementary energy between Ray and Sarif translates effectively on film. Ray delicately and innately explores the tender hearts behind two women who are flip sides of one another, energy, never resorting to tired clichés. “That was the intention,” notes Sarif, matter-of-factly, “and that’s one of the joys of collaborating with actors. In Lisa’s case, she brought things to Miriam and Tala that I hadn’t even considered. As a writer, you really think you know it all, but it’s a beautiful thing to have that … quality of your seeing how your scenery comes alive in a way you would never have imagined.”