The gay romance & coming-out-to-the-family story told in Touch of Pink is old-hat & rather boring, patched together from stock scenes plagiarised from 1950s light romances featuring the likes of Rock Hudson & Doris Day, but given a late-1970s gay community feeling though not intended as an historical. Having a Moslem family didn't change the story one whit; the family could just as easily been Unitarians there was so little individuality to their cultural context.
The film is saved mainly by Kyle McLaughlin as the spirit of Cary Grant. This overt rip-off of Woody Allen's Play it Again Sam might've been improved if "Cary" had been not the invisible friend to the insipid hero (Jimi Mistry), but an actual archly eccentric character interacting with more than one character.
The synptically revealed background story for the mother (Suleka Sue Mathew), of having gone to London in her youth to become the next Doris Day only to face anti-Moslem sentiment, & thereby gained her prejudiced & partially embittered dislike for "ice cream" meaning white people -- her story might have made a great film about dreams, injustice & disappointment. She was a complex character with a range of horrible & superior traits & would've been the better p.o.v. character. Her son was simply too whitebread for anything about him to have more than a slight impact.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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