Movie Reviews

Movie Reviews: I Can't Think Straight

I Can't Think Straight recalls the indie romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein in how it tackles the difficulties of accidental lesbian relationships between vivacious young women hailing from disparate cultural backdrops. I Can't Think Straight, at its simplest, is a girl-meets-girl love story where mutual attraction supersedes race, class, and creed. But due to the film's underlying political premise, the romance is equipped with built in fall-out. That's why it's a multi-layered, cliche-skirting film.

Tala (Lisa Ray), an exotic, sassy Christian based in London, and Leyla (Sheetal Sheth), a British Indian and devout Muslim, couldn't be more opposite or beautiful. The raven-haired beauties embark on a torrid affair that's strictly forbidden by Leyla's devoutly religious family and Tala's fiancée, among others.

The film emphasizes an overt political agenda that celebrates non-Western cultures. The parents of Tala and Leyla are of an old-fashioned mentality and verbally spar with their free-minded, more cosmopolitan offspring in some of the film's funniest exchanges. Tradition and expectations are things the younger generation scoffs at with derision, and Tala and Leyla's relationship is an extended metaphor for the dismissal of such attitudes.

Cultural and political discussions occur often, as they're an important component of Middle Eastern family dinners. First time director Shamim Sharif is careful to depict Middle Eastern families with depth and dimension. She doses dialogue with regional humor, tastefully done and offering viewers a window into a foreign culture.

As for the love story, there's plenty of tenderness between Tala and Leyla. Same sex or not, the women bring out the best in one another while the relationship aids in each woman's noble quest for self-discovery. That's nothing new. But watching them blossom outside of the confines of prescribed gender roles is how the film kidnaps viewer sympathy. Melodramatic moments and speeches about following your heart up the film's sap factor, but the cheesiness is always tempered by pressing social realities.

Plot twists help to subvert these genre cliches. Tala is initially presented as the brassy and unconventional rule breaker, yet she says, "No one lives like this. It's not easy. It's not acceptable," to her lover after their first sexual encounter. Leyla responds, "You are in the West now." Up until this moment, Leyla has been portrayed as an introverted, sheltered girl who blooms when she falls in love. Here, she transforms into the more evolved party in the relationship. Leyla's braveness and the couple's ongoing struggles are infinitely more interesting than Tala's verbal battles with her traditional mother.

The beauty of this film lies in its many contradictions, its push and pull between the old guard and the new, the traditional generation and the modern one. The lesbian love story is one piece of I Can't Think Straight's complicated yet captivating puzzle.

— Amy Sciarretto
12.02.08