Pinecone Movie Review: Onir Film Is A Ceiling Breaker For Queer Cinema In India – Times Now

About Pinecone

Not day by day can we see a movie about homosexual characters performed by homosexual actors, directed by a homosexual director and with a totally homosexual crew.

The homosexual gaze by no means felt extra penetrating than it does in Pinecone. A minimum of not in Indian cinema. Onir’s movie doesn’t go so far as Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain or Luca Guadagnino’s Name Me By Your Title. Onir’s movie has no nudity. But it surely exhibits males kissing and making out. Which is a big leap forward for queer cinema in our nation.

Pinecone is not only about intercourse. There’s a sturdy emotional core within the narration that comes from director Onir’s personal experiences as a homosexual man within the Hindi movie trade. Like Onir, Sid(Vidur Sethi) is an out-and-outed filmmaker and never a type of one-foot-in-the-closet-door sorts.

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Pinecone takes us by way of three phases and three males in Sid’s life. It walks in reverse, from the current, to Sid’s struggling days as an aspiring filmmaker, to his teenagers in Kalimpong which is my favorite episode for its freshness, innocence and dare I say, daring.

Debutant Vidur Sethi who performs Sid in two of the episodes(Hanun Bawra performs Sid throughout his adolescence) comes near capturing the conflict of the character’s internal and outer worlds. Arvind Kannabiran’s cinematography is just a little too postcard-pretty(why do homosexual males in motion pictures all the time should be good-looking?) however the visible resplendence works, given the movie’s euphoric tone.

The movie opens in charming Kochi with Sid gaslighting Rehan(Sahib Verma) after an evening of pleasurable ardour. Rehan desires a everlasting relationship. Sid is on the run.

Sid, we’re advised in two flashbacks, has confronted heartbreak and rejection up to now, as soon as throughout his adolescence which comes as Act 3. The mid-section the place Sid falls in love with a closeted homosexual man Sudhanshu(Amit Gurjar) is the weakest. There are not any surprises right here, nothing unusual a few homosexual man who prefers to guide a ‘regular’ life. Maybe the ordinariness of this episode in Sid’s love life is its biggest power.

All three phases in Sid’s life as a homosexual man in India, come collectively in an embrace of aching nostalgia and unhampered positivity, as if Onir was decided to make a cheerful movie a few homosexual hero. No illnesses, no AIDS(Onir’s first movie My Buddy Nikhil), no violent encounters with homophobic cops and hustlers on darkish alleys, and no mother and father shocked by their son’s sexuality.

The temper is upbeat, nearly idyllic. As if Onir had determined to clean away the tears of the homosexual group simply this as soon as.

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