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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Àma Gloria review – amazing performances in sensitive drama about a kid and her nanny

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Six year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani is wonderful as Cléo, strongly bonded to her carer Gloria, who has to leave her

By rights Louise Mauroy-Panzani should be at the front of the queue for every acting award going for her role in this gorgeous French drama. Just six years old at the time of filming (the casting director spotted her in Paris arguing with her brother in the street), she gives a performance so open and natural, it has an almost transparent quality. You feel what her character Cléo feels as her world is turned upside down over one summer. Equally brilliant is another first-time actor, Ilça Moreno Zego, a real-life nanny playing Gloria, who has taken care of Cléo since she was tiny and is now moving back to Cape Verde.

The opening scenes showing us Cléo’s life with Gloria are beautifully detailed. Cléo’s mum died when she was a baby, and she lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini), who is gentle but remote, still reeling from grief. It’s Gloria who is the sun in Cleo’s life. Running out of school her little face, poking out from under a tangled mop of curls, lights up at the sight of her nanny. Then, one day, Gloria gets a call. Her mother in Cape Verde has died; she is going home to look after her own children.

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