Touch of Pink: a Canadian cross-cultural comedy

TAKE ONE, June-Sept, 2004 by Janice Kaye

Location, location, location. Absent or present, it seems to be as important to the Canadian film industry as it is to the real estate business. Canadian expatriate Ian Iqbal Rashid, who wrote and directed the soon-to-be-released romantic comedy Touch of Pink, is fully cognizant of the politics of location in his feature directorial debut. Alim (Jimi Mistry), an East Indian/Ismaili Torontonian living in London, England, resists telling his judgmental drama queen of a mother (Suleka Mathew) that he and his white British roommate, Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid), are a gay couple. The central character, however, in this, yet another in a long tradition of border-crossing Canadian movies, is not only American but a movie icon--Cary Grant (impersonated surprisingly well by Kyle MacLachlan). Here the American cinematic sensibility--living inside the Canadian national imagination and colonizing Canadian culture for almost a century--manifests itself physically in a manner reminiscent of the Humphrey Bogart character in Woody Allen's Play It Again Sam, dispensing advice on style and romance.

Rashid has written Alim's mother, Nuru, as a former Doris Day wannabe, drawing heavily on references to Day's 1960s sex comedies, especially That Touch of Mink (1962) with Grant, which Rashid and his mother watched together when he was a boy. In addition to referencing other famous Grant movies such as Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and An Affair to Remember (1957), Touch of Pink includes a musical montage in which Nuru, dressed as Doris Day, dances and drinks champagne with her son's lover as though he were her own. "I wanted to make an old-style romantic comedy, with someone like me as the star, and pay homage to all those films I loved," says Rashid. "We have a young man who wants to be white and imagines himself as a guy living in a Hollywood movie. Real life intrudes and he can't sustain it. But the mess, pain, shame and difficulties lead him to a better place."

Ever since the infamous tax-shelter era (TSE) of the late 1970s and early 1980s, journalists, critics, filmmakers and politicians have lamented the use of Toronto and other Canadian cities as stand--ins for American locales, as though that were the main factor resulting in a good or bad movie. There has been endless talk about location and "telling our own stories." Very few discussions, however, have focused on the most difficult and important part of any film, the actual craft of writing a screenplay.

And just who are we, anyway? Raised in Toronto, Rashid has lived in the U.K. since 1990. Is the quintessential Canadian movie one that takes place in Britain and Canada, written and directed by an expatriate, gay, immigrant Torontonian living in London, England, and featuring an American movie star inside the head of the gay Canadian hero? Asked whether he and his movie are British or Canadian, Rashid answers, "The movie has the same nationality I do, but I don't know what that is! I feel Canadian in the U.K. and vice versa. The film really belongs to both countries but it is not a forced co-production. It's hard to give it one national identity. It belongs to other places as well--East India, Africa. It was a specific strategy." The majority of funding and crew on Touch of Pink came from Canada and most of the shooting was done in Toronto with a 90-per-cent Canadian cast. "Canada is much more confident in its identity now," Rashid says. "And Toronto is coming into its own. It's a very exciting city."

Toronto plays Toronto, although it also stands in for London, where the production could afford only three days of shooting. "I love Toronto," the Cary Grant character tells Alim, adding, "Does time always drag here like this?" It's reminiscent of Sandy's musings in the opening line of My American Cousin (1985). "Dear Diary: Nothing ever happens." Canadian movies have often depicted Canada as a boring place that becomes exciting only when Americans, such as Sandy's cousin Butch, arrive on the scene. Unlike Hollywood, "Toronto is not a tourist destination," Giles tells Alim. In still--swinging London, they can openly celebrate the anniversary of the first time they had sex. However, Toronto ultimately and ironically serves as the location where they are empowered to reveal their relationship to Alim's family. While Rashid's U.K. people (you know you've arrived in the film business when you have "people") suggested setting the film in New York so it would travel, he refused. "These are my two countries," he says. "It was my perverse pleasure to use Toronto as Toronto, and Toronto as London, the seat of the Empire. It felt really important to name Toronto as Toronto."

Rashid likes Canadian movies and lists some of his recent favourites: Les Triplettes de Belleville, My Life without Me, Les Invasions barbares, Marion Bridge and New Waterford Girl. He is a particular fan of Don Shebib's older films, and he also praises as "ahead of its time" Claude Jutra's TSE movie By Design (1982), which is about two lesbian fashion designers who want a baby. "Canadian filmmakers are privileged; they're so well-funded," says Rashid. "This sometimes leads to great works of art but they don't think of the audience first. They seem to resent it. But it's so much more effective if you connect with the audience. There are lots of political messages out there, but I want to entertain. Trashy movies have a kind of energy and life."