Lurking under the drama is the subtle tug-and-shove of a mundane gay relationship that opens the film - the resentments, kindnesses, annoyance and affection that goad the love. It follows two childhood friends, played by the late Dhruv Ganesh and Shiv Panditt, who set off on a weekend trip to the Ghats where feelings simmer, till the complicated tether snaps. Homegrown queer cinema that stung without the accompanying melodrama, Sudhanshu Saria’s film takes affection and attraction and pushes it to its most logical, crude extreme. But the story twists the female companionship into something so profoundly, so subtly queer, that all that seemed missing was the big kiss to seal the story shut. Madhuri Dixit and Huma Qureshi play women who stroke the passions of Babban (Arshad Warsi) and Khalujan (Naseeruddin Shah). Set around the mushairas where love, mostly hereosexual, expresses itself in perfumed prose, the film poses its intentions differently.
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Bulbul Can Sing, Rima Das’ follow up to the tender and rooted Village Rockstars continues to follow the three friends - two girls, one boy - as they come into their own, slashed by society’s stares, built by the affectionate shoulders of friends and lovers.Ībhishek Chaubey’s baroque masterpiece is not, at first glance, remotely queer. Sexuality, gender norms, gender expectations calcify with an insufferable rigidity. There comes a time when you grow from the innocence of childhood to the tensions of teenagehood, where suddenly, desire is felt and discussed with an urgent density. The show cobbles along in this bittersweet seesawing. In the first episode, he kisses a boy for the first time (He notes, “I think I’ll miss vaginas,” in his pointed, nasal Australian accent.) He also finds out that his mother attempted suicide. Josh, the central character, is gay and his various sexual escapades on quick-sex apps or the longing aftermaths, pepper the story that follows not him necessarily, but his world. Josh Thomas’ comedy-drama, 4-seasons strong, takes apart trauma and vulnerability with humour that isn’t reductive, derisive or gratuitous. It reminded me of something the academic Brian Horton told me while describing his thesis that mined for queer joy, “What are queer people doing when they’re not suffering?” At one point, one of the boys speaks of how he was raped by his uncle, and then he laughs at the camera, noting how his uncle is actually standing behind them, spying on them, looking warily at him. The tragic circumstances are foregrounded instead by the relentless joy that these characters feel and affirm. Saadat Munir and Saad Khan’s documentary follows a cast of queer characters - trans women (they refer to themselves as khwaja-sara, a cultural identity, not just a sexual or genderd one), gay men, and bar dancers who struggle to make ends meet in contemporary Pakistan. In the shadow of the AIDS epidemic, desire and disease have had an uneasy relationship with each other, and this film shakes up that tension with erotic extravagance. The film begins with a gratifying 20 minute scene in a gay sex club, but under the nurturing directorial gaze of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, the film’s emotional heft takes over, and it becomes a gut-emptying tale of urban loneliness, longing, love, lust, and disease. This watchlist is an attempt to look at a mixed bag of movies and shows that really got queer joy, queer sex, queer pain right.
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While a lot of the oft-highlighted queer movies are headlined and promoted commercially by stars, like Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan on Amazon Prime Video, and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga on Netflix, or Aligarh on Zee5, or even the much maligned Laxmmi on Disney+Hotstar, a lot also slips under the cultural radar. ALT Balaji, over the course of this year, has put out two big shows - His Storyy dealing with a married man who decides to come out late into his marriage, and The Married Woman, where the post-1992, politically fraught Delhi gives a housewife’s longings for a woman an additional veneer of tension.Īlso Read: The Ga(y)ze: Re-imagining Friendship In Bollywood Movies
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Netflix’s Sacred Games put trans representation on the shaky commercial forefront. Amazon Prime Video’s most coveted shows, Made In Heaven and Four More Shots Please, tackled homosexualtiy head-on. A lot of it has to do with the streaming revolution. Queer storytelling, in India, is at a very different place today than it was 10 years ago. It opens up discussions of what “Queer Cinema” means - Is it just like straight stories but with queer characters? What is the unique joy, angst, and sexual intrigue queer characters bring to a story? Pride Month, if nothing else, gives us the excuse and impetus to dive deep into the LGBTQ genre, much like a retrospective for filmmakers gives people an excuse to delve into their movies.