Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Anuparna Roy
Starring: Naaz Shaikh, Sumi Baghel, Bhushan Shimpi, Ravi Maan, Lovely Singh
Opening upon a montage of fading low angle shots of towering trees against the morning sky whilst a whimsical voice-over intones a titular ballad – "You built a house / But you never learned to carry an umbrella when it rains" - writer/director Anuparna Roy fills the frame with wide open space before Songs of Forgotten Trees settles into the breathless intimacy which will define its ensuing narrative; a story of developing female friendship and social mores. We cut to a shabby apartment block, wherein Swetha (Sumi Baghel) tentatively climbs the stairs towards a top floor flat in which Thooya (Naaz Shaikh) is loudly arguing with her brother about the funeral preparations for their father. The brother leaves, and, unbeknownst to Thooya, incoming tenant Swetha watches her new flatmate change her shirt, her eyes lingering on her exposed underwear.
It's a pensive and evocative opening, one which establishes the strained connection which the two characters share. Both on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, the young women share the flat and its limited space due to circumstances rather than affinity (we see them brush their teeth next to each other, a motion which would normally imply domestic familiarity but via Roy's deft framing is rendered disaffected). Thooya is an aspiring actor who engages in sex work to support herself, while Swetha is remote tech support; both vocations entailing a specific type of estrangement. We, too, seem one step removed from the action, with the camera keeping a staid distance (despite its subject, this is a chaste film: a sex-work scene is communicated via tangled feet). At one point we instructively see Thooya wonderingly press her palms up against a teeming fish tank; its beauteous inhabitants trapped within the narrow confines, watched from outside. Visuals, rather than dialogue, elucidate the unspoken story.
Songs of Forgotten Trees' mood is one of an esoteric chamber piece, expressing the cautious atmosphere which occurs pre-storm as we see Thooya and Swetha go about their quotidian life; domestic chores, unedifying but compulsory work, more teeth brushing. I like friendship on film (I made a right old show of myself getting upset when MJ draws her, Peter and Ned in the new Spider-Man film ☹), and it is both cute and convincing when Swetha runs through script lines with Thooya - a dynamic given a more sinister edge when she helps her with make-up prior to a customer call.
Debjit Samanta's cinematography is poetic, giving what are essentially everyday interactions (we see them cleaning the bathroom twice - what goes on in there?!) sensual weight. But this is a very slow burn, and, even at 70 mins, seems protracted. My heart lifted at the suggestion of a more concrete relationship between the two, yet the inconvenience of heterosexuality dampens the possibility: "if I was a boy I would marry you," Thooya regrets. The film instead creates narrative from the resultant tension between Swetha and Thooya, especially the former's fascinated distrust of her flatmate's job. Moreover, the men which both women encounter throughout are snivelling, craven and coercive: the film at least believes the pair would be better off together. In a penultimate shot which rhymes with an earlier bedroom sequence, we see both flatmates lying asleep on the same single bed, except, crucially, they are topped and tailed, their feet decidedly disentangled. Perhaps dutifully true to the social and cultural contexts which it depicts, if you are a hopeless romantic Songs of Forgotten Trees ends unsatisfactorily. In an early sequence, the more worldly Thooya asks Swetha how her date went. In response to her nondescript recount, the budding actor exclaims "is that it?," a phrase which may echo as the final credits roll.
Songs of Forgotten Trees is in UK cinemas from August 14th.
