Taglines: Two Cultures. Two Traditions. One Love.
I Can’t Think Straight is a romance film adapted from a same name novel about a London-based Jordanian of Palestinian descent, Tala, who is preparing for an elaborate wedding. A turn of events causes her to have an affair and subsequently fall in love with another woman, Leyla, a British Indian.
The movie is distributed by Enlightenment Productions. It was released in different theatres between 2008 and 2009. The DVD was released on 4 May 2009. The movie is directed by Shamim Sarif and stars Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth. The two actresses star in another movie with lesbian characters, The World Unseen, released in 2008.
In the upper echelons of traditional Middle Eastern society, wealthy Christian Palestinians Reema and Omar prepare for the marriage of their visiting daughter Tala to Hani in Jordan. But back at work in London, Tala encounters Leyla, a young British Indian Muslim 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. After a weekend getaway into the countryside, Tala and Leyla sleep together and the two women begin to fall in love. However, 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, Yasmin, help try to get 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.
Film Review for I Can’t Think Straight
Plugging the same two actresses into different Sapphic scenarios may be a valid filmmaking strategy but it can be an extremely boring one. When we last saw Sheetal Sheth and Lisa Ray (in New York and Los Angeles, that was just two weeks ago) they were playing would-be lovers in “The World Unseen.” Now they’re back to continue making eyes at each other in “I Can’t Think Straight,” yet another weightless confection from the writer and director Shamim Sarif.
This time Ms. Ray is Tala, a spoiled Jordanian who has bailed on three previous suitors and is about to be married to fiancé No. 4. But as Tala’s wealthy family plans a lavish Christian wedding in Amman, the bride-to-be is dallying in England with Leyla (Ms. Sheth), a coy Indian Muslim who writes flowery fiction and has difficulty keeping a boyfriend. Fortunately, a succession of glowing Hallmark moments on polo field and tennis court lie in wait to nudge the ladies toward sexual reorientation.
Will Tala once again dump her betrothed? Will Leyla’s nosy parents find her K. D. Lang CD? Before these and other burning questions can be answered, the plot must plod through a confetti storm of obstacles — religion, ethnicity, overbearing mothers — all of which are overcome in dewy, unsmudged close-up. This isn’t a movie, it’s an alternative-lifestyles campaign for Maybelline.
Another Review for I Can’t Think Straight
omophobia in Muslim families and communities is a topic ripe for exploration, but as its eye-rollingly lame titular pun makes clear, I Can’t Think Straight isn’t the film to do it. Shot with the gracelessness of a subpar student film and written with similar ungainliness, Shamim Sarif’s romance is a pantomime of a mid-‘90s Amerindie, charting the story of rebellious Palestinian beauty Tala (Lisa Ray) who, having already broken off three hetero engagements, drops yet another fiancé to canoodle with Indian Leyla (Sheetal Sheth).
Their love is forbidden, as are any traces of logic or understatement, with the film’s beyond-clichéd narrative—full of Arabs and Indians who are either wholly tolerant or intolerant—first depicting Tala as a huntress pursuing Leyla like a wolf stalks sheep, and then turning on a dime and having it be Lelya who teaches Tala to “be open with yourself” and embrace (not to mention tell her parents about) her lesbianism. Every discussion is a Big Conversation typified by frying-pan-to-the-face obviousness and accompanied by smushy female crooning in English and Arabic, while every performance functions like a mini-tutorial on acting artificiality.
Sarif and co-screenwriter Kelly Moss’s plotting barely rises to the level of A-B-C, and the same holds true for Sarif’s direction, which is full of drab, head-on compositions that struggle to rise to the level of functional. Via a housekeeper who makes funny-happy faces behind her stern employer’s back, Sarif attempts humor, though such efforts prove almost as pitiful as the film’s embarrassing sex scenes—full of slow-motion close-ups of lips, hands on skin, and hair, hair, hair!—and sketchy address of conservative Palestinians’ anti-Semitism. Ray and Sheth have all the chemistry of peanut butter and arsenic but more problematic is their one-dimensional emoting, though it’s ultimately in keeping with the film’s aptitude for tackling subject matter with the least amount of grace and subtlety possible.
Festivals and Awards
— Best Feature, Audience Award – Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival 2009
— Best Feature – International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Of Canary Islands, 2009
— Best Feature – Afterellen Visibility Awards
— Best Feature, Audience Award – Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2009
— Best Feature, Audience Award – Pink Apple 2009
— Audience Award Best Feature Film – Fairy Tales International Queer Diversity Film Festival (Calgary) 2009
— Jury Winner Best Feature Film – Festival Del Mar, Majorca 2009
— Audience Award, Best Feature – Vancouver Queer Film Festival 2009
— Best lesbian movie – The Holebifilmfestival Vlaams-Brabant 2009, Belgium
— Jury award for Best Women’s Feature – Tampa International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival 2009
— Best Feature Film – Gay Film Nights International Film Festival 2009
I Can’t Think Straight (2008)
Directed by: Shamim Sarif
Starring: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Antonia Frering, Nina Wadia, Dalip Tahil, Amber Rose Revah, Anya Lahiri, Kimberly Jaraj, Siddiqua Akhtar, Sam Vincenti, Rez Kempton, Darwin Shaw
Screenplay by: Shamim Sarif, Kelly Moss
Production Design by: Katie Carter
Cinematography by: Aseem Bajaj
Film Editing by: David Martin
Costume Design by: Charlie Knight
Art Direction by: Mari Lucaccini
Music by: Raiomond Mirza
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexual content.
Distributed by: Picturehouse
Release Date: November 5, 2008
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