TOUCH OF PINK

Rating: 3

Ian Iqbal Rashid’s TOUCH OF PINK is a glorious celebration of classic movie romance. It’s also a clear-eyed look at how those very romances, for better or worse, can seep into our subconscious and write the script of our lives. That in and of itself would be an interesting film, but he doesn’t stop there. Rashid has also written and directed a sly consideration of the tyranny of cultural conditioning and how hard it is to declare one’s independence even though it should be just a matter of choosing happiness.

Our hero is Alim (Jimi Mistry), a Canadian in London with a glamorous job as a stills photographer on A-list films, a fabulous boyfriend, Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid), and a traditional Pakistani Muslim family back in Canada who are beginning to wonder why he hasn’t settled down with a nice traditional Pakistani Muslim girl. With his cousin’s traditional wedding coming up, things are coming to a head for Alim. Giles is pressuring him to come out to his family and take him to the wedding, and his mother (Suleka Matthew) is suffering a mid-life crisis by showing up on his doorstep. With her frying pan. Fortunately, he has Cary Grant (Kyle MacLachlan) as his guardian movie star to help him over the rough spots in true Tinseltown fashion with questionable advice and soothing words to buck up Alim, whom he dubs his “little samosa.”

Rashid overcomes the gimmickry inherent in that premise, which is no mean feat. He focuses on the fully developed, emotionally complex characters, the corporeal ones, using Grant as the quirky host of the proceedings, commenting on the action while being part of it, sometimes directly to the audience. It helps overcome such time-honored schtick as having Alim and Giles “straightening up” their fashionable townhouse for Alim’s mother. MacLachlan and Rashid wisely don’t attempt a direct impersonation of Grant. Sure, he’s got the cleft chin and playful manner, but there was only one Grant and woe to him who attempts to fill those elegant loafers. Instead, he does an impression, nailing the cadence of Grant’s speech, the insouciance of the delivery, while sporting wardrobe from Grant’s films, including, ironically, GUNGA DIN. Mistry is suitably sweet, wide-eyed and boyish, evoking that strictly innocent sexuality of the films on which this one is modeled. Mathew has it tough successfully avoiding the inherent cliché of the traditional mother facing her son’s anything but life. First of all, she’s unapologetically stunning, a glamorous steamroller who compensates for her own disappointments by pushing her son into the conventional life that she thinks will bring them both happiness and her grandchildren. Though one moment she can be crying her heart out over those disappointments while her concerned family discusses whether the topiary behind which she weeps is a duck or a swan, she’s also got a tart tongue that is quick to point out the socio-political implications of Giles’ automatically assuming that the scrambled eggs she’s made for Alim in that special frying pan are for him, too.
And that’s the real charm of this film. Rashid maintains that light touch that characterized the idiom of those fluffy romances that Hollywood churned out with wild abandon during its Golden Age, and then gives it some real-world bite. It’s not just with those comments about the contentious relations between the first and third worlds, but also with the relationship we have with the movies, with that wonderful world unspooling on the silver screen that we can never have, only hold up for the inevitably disappointing comparison. But, true to that idiom where romance rules and a happy ending is de rigeur, Rashid sends his characters off both wiser and more capable of happiness here in the real world.