The World Unseen

South Africa in the fifties. The race laws have just been tightened. Miriam lives outside town with her husband and children; housework, the fields, silence. Amina runs a cafe and lets white and Black customers sit at the same table, which is forbidden. Amina wears trousers, drives her own truck and answers to nobody. The two of them meet. For the first time Miriam sees a woman living another way. That cafe outside the law puts both women in danger. Shamim Sarif directs and adapted the script from her own novel. Lisa Ray plays Miriam and Sheetal Sheth plays Amina. It is a South African and British co-production. The narrative puts the Indian community in South Africa at its centre; segregation is told from inside that community. The mixed table in the cafe is the political knot of the story; what is forbidden is not only the women's relationship but sitting at the same table. The matter it treats is invisibility; both women are people who, for different reasons, do not count. The film does not leave the marriage one dimensional and shows the husband's own trap as well. The narrative moves slowly and builds no large plot. Ray and Sheth also played together in another of the director's films. The photography builds the period and the place in detail. The ending gives no easy solution. Its limit is pace; the narrative is heavy, the dialogue explanatory, and some scenes feel like television. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama and love stories centred on women. Who it is not for: it is slow, plainly told, and the ending rueful.