Happy Onam to fellow Mallus on these lists (I'm half, and have eaten enough kalan and olan and pal-payasam and made enough Onam flower carpets as a kid - latent queer tendencies no doubt being manifested in the pink rose petal borders I'd put on them - to count pretty much as a full one).
And Onam seems the appropriate time to announce that the queer community in India is about to receive a present from Kerala: Sancharam (The Journey), a really excellent feature film with a lesbian theme that's set in rural Kerala. The film has been written and directed by a Ligy Pullapally and has been released to very good reviews in Kerala. Ligy is a good friend and when she was in Bombay for a few days recently to do the subtitling the film in English, she managed to find the time to show it to a few of us. I knew that she was working on a film, but I had little idea of what it was about. I guess I'd thought vaguely it was a short film or documentary, so I was really surprised to see a full fledged feature - and such a good one, with a simple, but strong story line, lyrically shot and with very good performance. After all the crap news we've had to deal with in recent months, this was a real tonic. The film starts in rural Kerala - not the backwaters, but the hilly areas in the North, if I'm right - where the family of Kiran, a Nair girl, comes to settle in her mother's old tharavad (ancestral house). Next door there's a Christian family with whose daughter, Delilah, Kiran quickly becomes best friends. They grow up together, playing, swimming, going to school, making fun of the boys. As they grow older though Kiran realises her attraction for Delilah, who's really beautiful, but does her best to suppress it. A Cyrano de Bergerac like situation arises, when Rajan, one of the local boys who's besotted with Delilah asks Kiran to help him write love letters to her. Eventually though Delilah finds out it was Kiran writing the letters - and she responds to her. But people start talking, Delilah's family starts panicking and they start looking for ways to marry her off. Kiran fights back, trying to get Delilah to resist the pressure. And then... well, I'll leave it for when you see it, but I will say that the ending, while not of the storybook kind, isn't unhappy either. One person at least gains freedom. All this is filmed against the lush backdrop of Kerala, the histories and customs of the tharavads, the strong women who run the houses in this matrilineal society. This is very much a women's film with all the strong roles going to them. Men instigate and force things, but its the womens struggles that are at the fore. The character parts are excellent: Delilah's strong and shrewd mother, who runs the family since her husband is dead, her wise and loving grandmother, Kiran's rather cold mother, a teacher who is unnerved when she finds out about the affair, and the local village witch who susses the girls out, long before they realise themselves. But the film rests with the two main characters and they are excellent. Delilah is really pretty and she knows it. She's the outgoing, flirtatious, confident one - until the end when realities start closing in. Kiran is quieter, more inwardly focused, but idealistic and able to find the strength when she needs it. I also found her really attractive, all the more so for not being obviously so. The film is undoubtedly slow, but I never felt it dragging. My only criticism - apart from a computer generated image at the end which did NOT work - is that perhaps Ligy underplayed the hostility the girls would face. They encounter plenty, but its mostly shock and confusion, whereas I'd guess - and I'm really guessing, I could be quite wrong here - in real life the girls would be likely to face even more direct contempt and violence. Perhaps Ligy decided not to go down that route since that would unbalance the film, and give it a dark edge that would take away from the relationship which really is its focus. One scene though did ring true. After Delilah's family finds out she's shut up in her room while her mother, uncle and the priest come in turns to sit with her. The mother wrings her hands, the priest prays and tells her about the mercy of Jesus, but the uncle... he's sort of turned on. He sits on the bed next to her with a half mocking, half lewd expression on his face, he cups her chin in his hand and says, "So you've had your fun then!" It was a moment of toe-curlingly truthfulness. I can think of so many Mallu men of that type, the useless ones who are still so full of themselves, who sit around drinking tea and shaking their legs and passing crude comments on any woman who passes. That is _exactly_ how they would react. Ligy has returned to Kerala, and from there will be going back to the US, where she lives, but she will now be finalising the formal release of Sancharam, entering it for festivals, looking for distributors and so on. Perhaps if we're lucky it might find commercial distribution, but one way or the other, most people should be able to see it soon. Don't miss seeing it if you get a chance! Vikram ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/WfTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Group Site: http://www.gaybombay.info ========================== NEW CLASSIFIEDS SECTION SEEKING FRIENDS? VISIT www.gaybombay.info click on classified section and type your message in the post section once the link opens What's hot? What's not? Where are the LGBT parties being held and when? Click here!! http://calendar.yahoo.com/YYY,04497/srt,0/gaybombaygroup/?v=42&POS= Yahoo! 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