Touch of Pink: a Canadian cross-cultural comedy

TAKE ONE, June-Sept, 2004 by Janice Kaye

The way Canadian filmmakers have dealt with issues of gender, sexuality and family are at least as important as location. Peter Harcourt and others have noted the importance of coming of age as perhaps the key Canadian genre, and Touch of Pink follows that seemingly unconscious tradition. Alim's many colonial parents--Cary Grant, Giles, his mother, and his aunt and uncle--help him grow up, sexually and nationally. No matter what the protagonists' age, the coming-of-age dynamics frequently take place within the family. And if a dysfunctional-family genre existed, it could easily form the basis of a subset in the Canadian film canon. Key to this is the mother/son or parent figure/child relationship, often creepily sexual, as in The Wars (1983), Double Negative (1980), Dirty Tricks (1981) and Middle Age Crazy (1980), as well as a great deal of incest, as in Explosion (1969), Blood Relatives (1978), Summer's Children (1979) and Alligator Shoes (1981). In many Canadian movies, the young male hero sits in a bathtub with the mother figure nearby; in Touch of Pink it's Cary Grant in a bubble bath with Alim's mother present. When she leaves London to return to Canada, Grant steps in, telling Alim he'll always be there for him. When Giles, in competition with a movie phantom, is driven to have an affair with another man, both he and Alim have a hidden lover. At the end of the film Alim learns to confront his mother, defy his family and find his own gay way.

It is remarkable how many other quintessential Canadian film images are contained in Touch of Pink: the absent father; the overbearing mother ("I'd like to get you off my back," Alim tells his mother); the homoerotic/homosexual subtext; parties with unhappy family overtones (here a sexual anniversary party held in a gay bar); the closet ("I love him so much I'm in the closet," says Alim); the Watcher (a character hidden from most, as Grant is hidden from all but Alim); a delusional hero/heroine (often going over the edge into madness); the inclusion of religious imagery/ discussion; and colonial references.

Sexual masquerade in Canadian film often shows itself in drag, with explicit examples of feminized male characters playing dress-up, from Explosion (1969) to Outrageous! (1977) to The Silent Partner 1978) to Perfectly Normal (1992) to The Five Senses (1995). Alim's masquerade is his gayness in the face of his family's desire to arrange a Muslim heterosexual marriage for him. Grant refers to his own masquerade as a charade in Charade. The American cinematic icon is represented as an insecure imaginary character fearful of being exposed as not as stylish and perfect as he seems. In fact, he's not even visible. In Canadian film, there are often things that are hidden: lovers, family members, relationships, plot lines, dialogue, names. Canadian cinema is itself a hidden cinema, one that few people see.

Rashid will undoubtedly have to field criticism about the use of the Cary Grant role and the casting of MacLachlan. "He's not the real Cary Grant," Rashid explains. "What was of interest to me is the energy created by his body of work. U.S. cinema has nothing to do with the reality of America. That's what my film is wrestling with--that idealized state of being American. Rich, glamorous, sophisticated, able to handle any situation with panache. The best of all things American, but also a fiction. 'The whole world wants to be like Cary Grant,' an interviewer once said to the real Grant. 'And so do I,' responded the Grant." Even Cary Grant wasn't Cary Grant. And Hollywood cinema is not America. It's Canada's hidden, unspoken lover.