Songs of Forgotten Trees review – sensitive, ambiguous drama of female intimacy in Mumbai

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A sex worker and a call centre employee forge an ambiguous relationship in a film of strong feelings In a tiny crumbling Mumbai apartment two women move around each other, squeezing into the kitchen to cook, or past one another in the hallway. The cramped space hems them in – just as society limits their choices. That is surely the point first-time director Anuparna Roy is making in a gentle drama set mostly in the apartment about the closeness that develops between the two women. One of the roommates is Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), an actor and part-time sex worker. The apartment belongs to a client, Nitin (Bushan Shimpi), an arrangement that outrages the neighbours. Thooya doesn’t care what they think, and has rented the second bedroom to a stranger, Shweta (Sumi Baghel), who works from home for an IT call centre. There is an awkwardness between them at first that develops into … what exactly? Romance? It looks that way, although the film’s final scene is ambiguous. Continue reading... f...
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The Virgin Suicides review – Sofia Coppola’s debut rereleased with solemn trigger-warning

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Sunlit suburban calm masks the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Sofia Coppola made her feature directing debut with this adaptation of the literary sensation of its day: Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel about five teen sisters in 70s suburban Michigan who take their own lives. Now it is rereleased with a solemn trigger-warning disclaimer at the beginning about certain historic attitudes which might now cause offence; these are unspecified, but appears to mean the entire premise of the film, up there in the title, but which is treated more circumspectly nowadays in the context of new ideas around self-harm and “suicidal ideation”.

This was a movie which mystified as many as it entranced, and it would be honest of me to admit that I didn’t quite understand it back in 2000, and maybe don’t quite now. But I can perhaps appreciate with more clarity its artistry and poise and the confident way Coppola allows her film to be serenely mysterious and almost affectless in its sunlit suburban calm, a reticence which appears to mask the shocking nature of the story itself: a horrendous tragedy in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age movie.

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