Beyond Paradise

Destiny weaves a love triangle: Shahrzad (Francia Raisa), a stunning music student, her husband Sean (Max Amini), a rising stand-up comedian, and Sebastian (Ryan Guzman), a poetic Spanish-American gardener. Caught in the middle is Shahrzad's piano teacher, Elana (Daphne Zuniga), a former screen femme fatale, who is having her own furtive affair with Sebastian. Soon Sebastian falls in love with Shahrzad. Shahrzad discovers her semi 'arranged' marriage with Sean is doomed. Unexpectedly, a friendship flourishes between Shahrzad (Muslim) and her piano teacher Elana (Jewish), nourished by their passion for classical music, especially Tchaikovsky's. It grows stronger when they learn of each other's secret tragedies. Shahrzad attracts the attention of two women, Elana and Parisa, her mother-in-law. Simultaneously, Shahrzad becomes the object of desire for three men: Sebastian, Sean, and Ray (Misha Crosby), the loner, young brother-in-law. Infusing the young lovers' secret romance are Rumi's ecstatic poems and Lorca's mysterious poetry that drive Sebastian in pursuit of Shahrzad, inflaming a passion that threatens to destroy everything.

It was a musical cocktail born in a marketing meeting: Two parts easy listening, one part jazz, a healthy dollop of conga drums, a sprinkling of bird calls, and a pinch of textless choir. Serve garnished with an alluring woman on the album jacket for best results. Liberty Records co-founder Si Waronker called it Exotica; the soundtrack for a mythical air conditioned Eden, packaged for mid-century, tiki torch-wielding armchair safariers. In the five years after Exotica—Martin Denny’s 1957 landmark Liberty debut—arrived, hundreds of other ethnographic forgeries washed up in record racks all over the U.S., bearing titles like Sophisticated Savage, Sacred Idol, Chant of the Jungle, Polynesian Paradise, Exotic Paradise, Taboo, Primitiva, Forbidden Island, Afrodesia, Hypnotique, Percussion Exotique, and a barrel’s worth of other portmanteaus. “All of those ica and itiva endings I came up with because I thought I was being cute,” Waronker said. “And I don’t know why, but nobody got wise.”

It was a musical cocktail born in a marketing meeting: Two parts easy listening, one part jazz, a healthy dollop of conga drums, a sprinkling of bird calls, and a pinch of textless choir. Serve garnished with an alluring woman on the album jacket for best results. Liberty Records co-founder Si Waronker called it Exotica; the soundtrack for a mythical air conditioned Eden, packaged for mid-century, tiki torch-wielding armchair safariers. In the five years after Exotica—Martin Denny’s 1957 landmark Liberty debut—arrived, hundreds of other ethnographic forgeries washed up in record racks all over the U.S., bearing titles like Sophisticated Savage, Sacred Idol, Chant of the Jungle, Polynesian Paradise, Exotic Paradise, Taboo, Primitiva, Forbidden Island, Afrodesia, Hypnotique, Percussion Exotique, and a barrel’s worth of other portmanteaus. “All of those ica and itiva endings I came up with because I thought I was being cute,” Waronker said. “And I don’t know why, but nobody got wise.”