Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

rwalton999 Cinematographically perfect,location likewise,casting could not have been better,the pace of the tale was brilliant. I loved this film,it was film-art. I loved it and was pleased that the ending wasn't 'Hollywood or Bollywood'. I couldn't have agreed more with the previous reviewer. More tastefully executed films like this please ! It is a must see and worthy of 10 gold stars by any standard. I have never seen a film that has touched on the lives and times of immigrant East Indians in South Africa,before and I found it to be an eye-opener and quite profound. I suspect that there must be a multitude of similar tales in need of being told from all British Colonies of the time.I'm not about to make excuses nor sympathies as I think it ridiculous to apolgise for the behaviours of past peoples. I endeavour personally to never repeat such practises myself! Nor should you.

lastliberal Before I Can't Think Straight, there was this film. Both were written and directed by Shamim Sarif, and starred Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth - a combination that assures excellence.In a background of oppression in South Africa in 1952, we view a struggle for personal freedom.Amina (Sheth) wants to be free to live her life as a lesbian without bigotry. Miriam (Ray) wants to be free of a demanding and philandering husband. Jacon (David Dennis), a half-black wants to love a white woman (Grethe Fox).We can only assume that it works out for two of the three characters, and that will have to satisfy us.

Ali Catterall This simply could not be any worthier: the chief keywords here being South Africa; apartheid; multiculturalism. And lesbians. A richly textured 12-part epic might be constructed around that tidy grouping, but author Shamim Sarif gave us a single award-winning novel instead, based on her grandmother's recollections of 1950s Cape Town. Less agreeably, and most unusually for a writer, she has also been given free hand to script and direct her own movie adaptation. Really bad move.Fiercely independent Amina (played by the Indian-American Sheetal Sheth) literally wears the trousers as owner of a Cape Town café in 1952. She's always getting into trouble with the police for serving "blecks". She's also something of a pariah within her own prejudiced immigrant community for speaking out against the subjugation of women. One day her counterpart turns up. Miriam (Indian-Canadian Lisa Ray) is a subservient housewife, mother and shopkeeper, married to racist, chauvinist pig Omar (Parvin Dabas), who in turn is having an affair with his sister-in-law Farah (Natalie Becker) under poor Miriam's nose. Amira is smitten. The lady's ripe for turning. But will she ever persuade Miriam to shrug off her shackles and find true love? Never mind the world, this will probably end up a film unseen for the most part, but that doesn't automatically make it some kind of ghettoised gem. Like Sarif's other lesbian drama I Can't Think Straight (also featuring Sheth and Ray) this is queer cinema by default only, too mimsy and soapy a concoction to be regarded as anything other than a daytime TV movie.If the direction is flatter than a chapatti, the performances are mostly amateur hour, with cringeworthy dialogue clamouring to be heard above an hysterical din of a score; tremulous strings and fussily tinkling pianos drowning each and every soft focus scene in caramelised gloop. It's certainly a huge letdown after opening the film with Nina Simone's gorgeous rendition of 'I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free' - all-purpose protest song and knowing shout-out to the singer's significant gay fan base.The leading ladies frantically bat their lashes at one another, but with so little chemistry between them they'd produce more sparks trying to light a cigarette with a dodgy disposable. Miriam's sexual awakening during a driving lesson is also unconvincing. "You didn't come to give me a driving lesson, did you?" Miriam hotly accuses Amina. "So why did you come?" This exchange, after they've already snogged.Most damagingly, for a film set during an era when flouting racial and gender conventions could land you on Robben Island for years, there is absolutely zero sense of danger. It's as if Sarif is so confident audiences are already up to speed with the politics (or with her novel), that she hasn't bothered with the important stuff: atmospherics, a feel for the time and place.The real drama, it seems, is going on elsewhere: a subplot involving the café's mixed-race, middle-aged co-owner Jacob (David Dennis) secretly romancing Madeleine (Grethe Fox), a white postmistress. But largely, what we're left with is a pair of total babes brushing lips. The only threat for this glamorous pair would appear to be smudged cosmetics.

craigwilkins-1 I had the good fortune of seeing this magnificent film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Once a year, sometimes twice I see a film that makes my three movie a week habit all worthwhile, something that is so honest and pure that it's like watching a little piece of Heaven come to life on the screen in front of you. The World Unseen was that for me. I don't want to give anything away. I'll simply say that Writer/Director Shamim Sarif works from her heart and her soul delivering a movie that obviously meant the world to her. Lisa Ray, so wonderful in Water, had me in the palm of her hand, pencil her in as an actress to watch in the future. And Sheetal Sheth was a revelation.Set in the Indian community of Cape Town during Apartheid, The World Unseen looks through the politics, around the issues and shows us the world that is the lives and loves of two young woman, one very traditional, one anything but.