Indian independent cinema now has its own Brokeback Mountain.
To describe Cactus Pears as such might be a bit reductive, but there’s more to this comparison than the fact that this film also revolves around two gay men consummating their suppressed feelings for another in a rural setting. Just like the work of that film’s Taiwanese director Ang Lee, Roham Parashuram Kanawade teases strikingly nuanced performances from his cast and subtle social commentary from what is essentially a very human story in his delicate feature-length debut.
Revolving around a Mumbai-based man’s conflicted feelings as he reconnects with a childhood sweetheart while he mourns the passing of his beloved father, Cactus Pears is at once a sensitive study of its two protagonists’ simmering feelings for each other, and also a portrait of a provincial community where everyone – from conservative elders waxing lyrical about long-held creeds to young people resigned to their fate – seems forced to play along to long-held and rarely challenged social norms.
To his credit, Kanawade veers away from painting his characters with moral brushstrokes, just as he and his production designer Tejashree Kapadne decline to portray this Indian village through simplistic visual signposts of rural poverty. There is a distinctive sequence in which the viewer is invited to decipher the class discrepancy between the two protagonists through the wealth of cooking utensils (and lack thereof) propping up the action foreground. It’s hardly a surprise that Cactus Pears’ international tour is still ongoing after its award-winning world premiere at Sundance. The film is bowing in competition at the Singapore International Film Festival just as it unspools on a limited roll-out in seven cities across the U.S.
The story begins as the desolate and dishevelled Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) arrives in his ancestral village to attend the ten-day funeral rite of his recently deceased father. With his head still spinning with the many rules he has to follow – that he must walk around barefoot, sleep on the floor and limit himself to two meals a day (with no extra helpings allowed) – he is also instantly subjected to many a disparaging remark from all around. He is criticised for wearing clothes of the right mourning colour and chided for having become feeble because he “works in an air-conditioned office” in the city.
His days eventually perk up when he reconnects with Balya (Suraaj Suman), who hails from a poorer family than Anand’s and has resigned himself to life as a farmer in the boondocks. While Kanawade starts off their scenes together with subtlety, the frisson between them is palpable from the get-go. The first glimpse of Balya’s sexuality (and, through deduction, Anand’s) is also hinted at rather than pronounced, as he is shown attending to a man – a “special friend” – who visits him from afar, for something “which might not need an hour” to finish.
And so their relationship slowly (and secretly) blooms, just as their families – specifically Anand’s stern uncle (Nitin Bansode), and Balya’s tradition-minded parents – continue to hassle them to fit in. In Anand’s case, it’s about acting more manly; Balya, meanwhile, has to fend off an arranged marriage with a comparatively wealthier girl, an arrangement that is supposed to make him whole and his family more financially secure. As the narrative moves along, however, it turns out that they are doing all this because they all know what this is about, but dare not speak its name. The relatives’ complicity is threatened by Anand’s mere presence and the way it galvanises Balya to defy his fate.
If the couple’s struggle against authority is the “sense” part of the story, the “sensibility” would have to be Anand’s longing for his dead father. Shunning the use of flashbacks, Kanawade simply peppers the film with his presence: for Anand, the old man is there in the yellowed photos of yore and the sweet birdsong at dusk. The viewer is then slowly led to the reasons and impact of that long-ago rupture of Anand’s relationship with his father, and how it feeds his own repression and reconciliation with his sexuality.
Expanding on the themes anchoring the two shorts he made about the sexual awakening of queer characters in rural India (Sundar, U for Usha), Kanawade’s solid screenplay is brought to life by electric performances from his two leads. Slowly and steadily, Manoj evokes Anand’s gradual transformation as he comes out of his shell to face up to both his desire and despair; Suman plays the yang to Manoj’s yin, as he brings Balya’s complex traits – hard-boiled farmer, tender lover, starry-eyed country boy – to the surface.
Director, screenwriter: Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
Producers: Neeraj Churi, Mohamed Khaki, Kaushik Ray, Hareesh Reddypalli, Naren Chandavarkar, Sidarth Meer
Executive producers: Ilann Girard, Kishor Vasant Sawant
Cast: Bhushaan Manoj, Suraaj Suman, Jayshri Jagtap
Director of photography: Vikas Urs
Editor: Anadi Athaley
Production designer: Tejashree Kapadne
Costume designer: Sachin Lovalekar
Sound designers: Anirban Borthakur, Naren Chandavarkar
Production companies: Lotus Visual Productions, Dark Stories, Taran Tantra Telefilms, Moonweave Films, Bridge Postworks
World sales: MPM Premium
Venue: Singapore International Film Festival (Asian Competition)
In Marathi
112 minutes
