Sabar Bonda review: Rohan Kanawade delivers a tender, deeply moving study of queer love in one of the year's best films

Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) made history as the first Marathi feature film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and win the Grand Jury Prize.

What does it mean to be a gay man in India? Not the India of urban metropolis which has more modern attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community; but the India that resides in villages, entrenched within deeply conservative religious and social standards. The idea of ‘coming out’ is complex, for it entails battling family expectations and societal pressures to settle down by marrying.

Bhushaan Manoj and Suraaj Suman give nuanced performances in Sabar Bonda.

In Rohan Parashuram Kanawade's gentle and wondrous feature film, Sabar Bonda, the writer and director's eye focuses on the story of two men from rural Maharashtra coming to realize their love for each other in adulthood, still in a shared secrecy. This love has known no language of expression, so it must be hidden: from their families, their relatives, and sometimes even from themselves. (Also read: Sabar Bonda director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade says queer characters from rural areas are not shown on screen)

The premise

Kanawade's protagonist Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) appears in a state of aftershock, as the frame informs the audience that his father has died. So he is taking the dead body to his ancestral village, along with his mother. From here on, he must be hyper-aware of all the traditions that he will have to follow as part of the grieving period that lasts for 10 days. (He must change his black shirt, his mother reminds him.) It is the beginning of a sort of unwanted attention from his father's extended family and relatives in the village. Anand is in his 30s, so why isn't he married still? He has a steady defiance about him. His mother doesn't bother him on this matter, which is enough.

Here, he meets the next-door friend Balya (Suraaj Suman), a local farmer who spends his days grazing the goats in the nearby hilly regions. A key scene tells us that he also leads a private life of a closeted gay man, when a distant relative comes to meet him late in the evening for a ride. Balya is drawn to Anand, his life outside the confines of the village and its implications. Kanawade does well by establishing their decades-long friendship in the smallest of gestures and anecdotes. Slowly, tender feelings emerge between them- and the first time Balya touches Anand, the world seems to catch a breath amid the hushed silence of the trees. It is a scene of incredible, heart-stopping beauty- captured beautifully through the lens of cinematographer Vikas Urs.

What works

While Sabar Bonda seems simple in its rumination on the dynamics between the two men, Kanawade's gaze turns the wheel forward in confronting the pressures of being a non-conformist in a heteronormative socio-cultural space. Balya clarifies that he won't marry, a decision that seems illogical to his parents. Then there are the customs that Anand has to follow as part of the grieving period. These two men's journeys are internal, and Sabar Bonda wrenchingly humanizes their everyday struggles, of the veneer of respectability that they have to guard every single day.

These two men have distinct private lives that are separated from their public lives; and even if they might be the protagonists of Kanawade's film, Anand and Balya are far from the prototype of leading men that crowds popular mainstream cinema in India. These men are soft-spoken, sensitive and wounded; what they think and what they are able to say, might not always overlap.

Sabar Bonda slows down a bit during the second half, and loses some of its momentum in its rumination on the customs. Still, the film retains its power on the assured turns from its principal cast. Suraaj Suman is immensely effective as the caring Balya, carving out an entire livelihood of quiet bravery through his lines. Bhushaan Manoj's Anand is a beautiful creation, so fragile and open-hearted in the way the actor submits to the film's shifting emotional tone. He is hurting, and also falling in love- a strange collision of feelings that he does not know how to express. Manoj captures that thoughtfulness with terrific sensitivity and intelligence.

A giant leap forward in terms of queer representation in Indian Cinema

Sabar Bonda often reminded me of the brute romance in God's Own Country, the 2017 film starring Josh O'Connor. In both films, love blooms in the midst of harsh, unsparing surroundings. Kanawade's filmmaking here is precise and personal, which makes Sabar Bonda such a piercingly honest document on Indian queer lives. This is a giant leap forward in terms of queer representation in Indian Cinema. Recognising what one wants to believe and who they want to love- isn't that everything? One should be allowed to choose both without any fear. This is one of the finest films to have come out of India this year.