This is the official submission from Canada for Best International Feature at the 93rd Academy Awards. It is an adaptation of the 1994 novel by Shyam Selvadurai. Selvadurai was born in Sri Lanka. He and his family emigrated to Canada in 1983 when he was teenager after civil war broke out in his country. His life in Sri Lanka was also complicated due to the fact that he is gay. Selvadurai's novel was a semi-autobiographical depiction of all that. We get a little boy not unlike Selvadurai realizing his gender nonconforming tendencies and later that same boy as a teenager realizing his same-sex attraction. As a subplot, we also get some depiction of what led up to the Sri Lankan Civil War. Directed and co-written by Deepa Mehta (
Fire and
Water), the film balances those two things, a Sri Lankan boy's burgeoning homosexuality, as well as the run-up to a modern-day civil war. At least, it tries to balance those two things. I'm not sure Mehta totally succeeds at doing so. One of the two gets short-changed.
Brandon Ingram stars as Arjie, the Sri Lankan whose sexuality is in question. He lives in Colombo, which is the capital city of Sri Lanka. He is Tamil, which is a specific ethnic group in Southeast Asia. The Tamils mainly inhabit India but there is a significant population in Sri Lanka. When Arjie was younger, he didn't think about his Tamil heritage all that much. He was too busy hanging out with his aunt who would allow him to wear girls' clothing and put on makeup. If anyone saw the film Mambo Italiano (2003), Arjie's relationship with his aunt is exactly the same as the one depicted in that 2003 independent gay film. Of course, children tease him for his desire to cross-dress and of course his father disapproves. In order to make his father happy, he learns how to play tennis and defeat his siblings at it.
His homosexual tendencies are seemingly suppressed until he reaches secondary school and he's about 17 years-old. It's there that he starts to realize what being Tamil means. Tamils are a minority that gets discriminated against. It manifests itself for Arjie when he's bullied by boys who are Sinhalese. The Sinhalese people are the majority and they're more native to the island of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese don't like the Tamils. I'm not sure that the film does a good enough job of letting non-Southeast Asians know why the Sinhalese dislike the Tamils. There's some TV news footage that Arjie's family watches that inform us a little of the violence that's been occurring, involving the Tamil Tigers, which is considered a terrorist group. The film does try to mitigate that idea of the Tamil Tigers being terrorists, but it's too vague or subtle in that regard. The film swings more to Arjie's love interest.
Rehan Mudannayake co-stars as Shehan, a fellow student at the same school as Arjie. Shehan defends Arjie when he's bullied. The two then start to bond. They share a book in English class. Eventually, their relationship turns physical. Sweetly, gently and intimately they connect on the mouth. Of course, it's a taboo, a taboo whose consequences aren't explored but are obvious. It also doesn't help the fact that Shehan is Sinhalese. The film sets up for what could be a gay Sri Lankan version of Romeo and Juliet.
Arjie and Shehan are two star-crossed lovers, not only due to the taboo of homosexuality but also due to both hailing from two families whose people will become at war. Yet, this fact is never played up in the film. It's probably due to us never seeing Shehan's family. He's like Bruce Wayne from the
Batman films or like Sal Mineo's character from
Rebel Without a Cause (1955). It's just Shehan alone in a big house with a man who seems like either a butler or some kind of servant. That's not clear. As such, there's no dramatic tension there.
At one point, some say that the Tamils are like the Jews of Southeast Asia. It implies that there is some kind of persecution and even Holocaust occurring against the Tamils, which is factually not far from the truth. Yet, aside from a few things, here and there, that's not totally clear or it's not as played up as it could have been. As such again, there's little to no dramatic tension there, until the very end. The final few minutes of this film attempts to depict what's called "Black July," which was essentially the start of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 1983, but the events feel like they come out of nowhere because I don't think the film establishes it enough. For non-Southeast Asian people, it's without context. If you are Southeast Asian and familiar with this history, it wouldn't need explanation, so it's a tricky balance of how much context something like that needs or should have, depending on who the target demographic is.
One last thing is a controversy this film has. When this film was first screened, there were some in the Tamil community that criticized the film because it didn't have actual Tamil actors in it, at least in some of the major roles. Some or others also criticized the language spoken in the film as not being accurate to how actual Tamils speak. Radheyan Simonpillai is a critic that is Sri Lankan and works in Toronto. He pointed out the language problem. Some complained that the language was ineligible. The film was dubbed to correct that issue, but there is the separate issue of casting. Simonpillai had a
conversation with the filmmakers that dispels the criticism. It's a great conversation, coming off what was a difficult film to accomplish given the current situation concerning the Sri Lankan diaspora and homosexuality in Sri Lanka. However, people should make up their own minds about the film before hearing the backstory.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 49 mins.
Available on Netflix.
Comments
Post a Comment