The World Unseen (2008)

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If Sarif improves with experience, she might regret ever having allowed this effort to be seen by the public.

Both films are politically daring as well as what used to be called risque. Neither, I'm afraid, is well directed or acted.

No amount of heaving bosom or quivering bottom lip can evoke a romantic frisson if the emotion simply isn’t there.

As drama, it's insipid. As erotica, it's useless.

You wait all year for a lesbian comedy drama with the production values of a 1980s TV movie and the acting standard of a carpet shampoo advert, and then two come along at once.

A curiously strait-laced, timid and self-conscious affair.

While the visuals never rise above TV-movie adequacy and some background acting hovers at am-dram level, The World Unseen's central story is strong enough to hold attention.

Intimacy, nuance and emotional punch are conspicuous only by their absence. Dreary.

This tale of forbidden love in the early days of apartheid South Africa suffers from heavy-handed direction and stodgy exposition, but it is made tolerable by its two central performances.