Orthodoxies pry,
prickly as at all times. “Particular
buddy” will pry me open
A queer Marathi language romantic drama with the mottled, lingering emotional punctuation if not at all times the verbal pithiness of a haiku, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s narrative characteristic debut “Sabar Bonda” (“Cactus Pears”) brings to earth its homosexual protagonist’s existential limbo by resorting to a perennially dependable inciting incident: the dying of the patriarch, adopted by a interval of culturally particular mourning.
Anand (Bhushaan Manoj), a thirty-year-old soft-spoken name middle employee residing in Mumbai, has come out solely to his mother and father, to not his prolonged household in his ancestral village within the state of Maharashtra to which he returns for a customary ten days of grieving. That exception itself is noteworthy. Parental acceptance is the vacation spot of many LGBTQIA+ film plots, despite the fact that latest queer cinema appears to have veered away from the trope. Within the South Asian context, and notably in a rural, agricultural, center India setting the place aged kin and aunt figures stay avid arbiters inside the establishment of marriage, for a narrative to start with the protagonist’s mom, performed with disarming transparency by Jayshri Jagtap, in cahoots along with her son to take care of his privateness and defend his option to not wed, is shocking — and uncommon.
That highly effective mother-son bond is one in all two temper scapes of intimacy that Kanawade conjures in “Sabar Bonda,” a movie speckled with stretches of sensuousness and moments of overdue, barrel-shaped embraces, shot decisively with unapologetic realism or transportive reverie, and framed by cinematographer Vikas Urs both in tender wides or in excessive closeups of faces geometrically organized on surprising corners of the display screen.
The second bond is one the story resolutely builds, between Anand and Balya (a luminous Suraaj Suman), his estranged childhood buddy, now a farmhand and goat herder who stayed again within the village, who isn’t out to anybody in his household, and has additionally been warding off strain to get married. The 2 males get reacquainted, as Anand accompanies Balya and his goats in lengthy lazy days, gaining respite from visiting mourner kin. Collectively they muse in regards to the diminished variety of cactus pear vegetation (elsewhere referred to as prickly pear) within the area, a bygone beloved mango tree, and the final usurpation of the agricultural, whereas sharing their armor of excuses, some cheeky, to stay single.
“Single males” is arguably a brand new class of marginalization explored within the Indian cinematic canon. In South Asia it’s usually the lady baby who represents the burden for her household, be it by way of the vice of dowry, the curse of being decrease caste, or the contaminated blessing of training. “Sabar Bonda” is commendable in the way it demonstrates the distinctive silent pains borne by many queer males who, regardless of their male privilege, must struggle to stay unattached (identical intercourse marriage is illegitimate in India), to not be infantilized, and to appreciate relationships longer lasting than fast clandestine intercourse.
Per the ideology dominating the movie’s world, the ilk of Anand and Balya can finest hope to be “khaas mitra,” translated as “particular mates,” however Kanawade tinges the time period with a sure angst, and Manoj embodies it with mini trembles that soar off his lithe physique like untuned radio waves. The “khaas mitra” workaround is met with curiosity from some quarters, and could be with a surefire pariah standing from others. Simply as the agricultural is shorn of indigenous flora and feminine fetuses, as Balya observes in macabre peculiar style (referring to excessive charges of feminine infanticide), the dream of a life spent with particular buddy is a depletion reimagined as a marginal acquire by the marginalized.
“Sabar Bonda” doesn’t preach the best of a full, glad love life, and maybe doesn’t even take care of Western AKA colonialist concepts about self-actualization. What it does effectively is permit glimpses of unhappiness and incompletion within the interstices of its poetic candids. Its most riveting scenes really feel like suspended, painterly vignettes — recalling the haiku’s stoppages and liltingness — despite the fact that its narrative stitches ten days of chronological time.
Unhappiness certainly, but there may be levity, directness, even eroticism. It’s in these modes one needs the movie lavished longer, or a minimum of transitioned to and away extra easily, simply as “Name Me by Your Title,” “Viet and Nam,” and “Moonlight,” whose assured overlaying of moods onto themes may need impressed how Kanawade approaches characterization. Balya, safer in his freelancer farmer standing, activates a pillow to look by Anand, dispelling a few of his buddy’s newfound doubt relating to his late father’s acceptance of his queerness. It’s Balya who perceives how Anand’s luscious unruly curls crave caress.
A heartbreaking early picture of Anand quivering on his haunches earlier than the funeral pyre is what Balya interprets as an invite to his buddy to calm down below the shade of childhood bushes. Balya is likely to be the extra lively character, however Anand too reciprocates to salvage Balya. Away from prying eyes, these single males transcend the boundaries of particular mates: momentarily, they turn into unmarked dreamers roaming the pastures of want.
A problem that emerges when a movie luxuriates inside its scenes of intimacy is following by on casually launched narrative conflicts. Anand apparently had a brother who died a very long time in the past. He additionally had a lover within the metropolis who stopped responding to his texts as soon as he bought married. In most tales, these clashes would type discrete subplots. Whereas “Sabar Bonda” does achieve grafting an total arc of grief on its protagonist — the ending converses with the opening poignantly — it does oddly really feel a bit busy, succumbing to too many scenes of prying relative banter. Like many latest worldwide pageant movies from Asia and MENA, this movie cycled by a number of labs and co-production markets, so its barely topsy turvy id as chatty social drama versus queer poetry movie isn’t surprising.
Kanawade’s assured debut facilities homosexual males and defiant accepting mother and father in a rural setting the place mourning is greater than a brief time period assortment of beguiling conventional practices and contradictory expectations. The movie’s honesty, whether or not loquacious or laconic, sears much more within the absence of a rating. Its observational ethos is outstanding on condition that it’s quasi-autobiographical.
The filmmakers put together us by eradicating the thorns of the cactus pear and slicing open the fruit throughout its middle. They ask us to recollect the faces of the lads about to chew into the flesh. To befriend them even, as a result of respite from their numerous griefs can disappear shortly into the downs of a staunch, arid panorama.
Grade: B
“Sabar Bonda” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant. It’s presently searching for U.S. distribution.
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