In The World Unseen, we learn (unsurprisingly) that Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1950s—at the start of apartheid—was anything but good times for blacks or Indians or really anyone who wasn’t lily white. In this film, adapted and directed by Shamim Sarif from her own novel, so many hot issues are at play that it’s a bit dizzying to keep track of who is being oppressed by whom. But here goes: Amina (Sheetal Sheth), an Indian woman who dresses just like the Mary Stuart Masterson character in Fried Green Tomatoes (there are other similarities, too, but more on that in a minute), is living dangerously by running a popular cafe with the “colored” (i.e, mixed race), middle-aged and dignified bow-tie-wearing Jacob. Jacob is having a doomed flirtation with the white woman at the post office. Amina doesn’t want to get married and live traditionally because she seems to like wearing pants quite a lot and has learned through her tragic family history that marriage can be suffocating. Then there’s Miriam (Lisa Ray), a listless and pregnant Indian housewife with a bossy and cheating husband who turns out to have his own rebellious twin sister living in Paris that he failed to ever mention. Still following? Miriam meets Amina, and you can practically hear the boom-chicka-boom-boom start up in the foreshadowing background.
Miriam’s husband hires Amina to plant a vegetable garden (this is not a euphemism!) and the women have intimate conversations, read poetry and inevitably fall in love. If this all sounds rather soap opera-y, it’s because it totally is—from the strange staging and direction to the lighting that is reminiscent of a stilted BBC serial. It’s too bad, too, because the subject is absolutely fascinating; everyone in this movie is breaking some sort of rule, or desperately wants to. But the movie flits from one earnest subject matter to the next, without pausing long enough to bring any actual depth to anything. Is it about women breaking free of their male oppressors? Or is about the horrific conditions and laws inflicted on immigrants in racist South Africa? The lesbian love story between Amina and Miriam lies at the center, but after all the meaningful looks, significant touches-on-the-hand and an innuendo-laden driving lesson (sigh), these two do less onscreen than any spring breakers on Girls Gone Wild. The baddies in the film—the jerky husband, the seductive mistress, the white South African policeman—are more caricature than character. But, I will say that I can’t remember a movie that boasts such a jaw-droppingly beautiful cast—each woman is more impossibly gorgeous than the next, with dresses that would make the wardrobe department on Mad Men weep.
The World Unseen opens Friday at the Quad Cinema.
svilkomerson@observer.com
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