Evening Shadows (2018)

I remember as a child seeking out films featuring LGBTQ characters and the struggle to find representation on the big screen. Often those characters would be rather two dimensional, noble examples with few imperfections and often their story was a simple existential struggle for acceptance for being who they are. Flash forward to my adulthood and now I seek LGBTQ films which feature a range of characters in diverse situations. The entire "please accept me for who I am" narrative is not just a bore but rather condescending. I don't need media to tell me it's okay to be gay. Yes queer people are human and deserving of respect. Just saying that isn't enough to make for an interesting movie.

I had heard so much buzz about Evening Shadows, described as the first Indian queer film to get wide circulation. I was eager to get a non-western perspective on queer cinema so upon finally getting to see it I jumped on the opportunity. Very early in the film I was greatly disappointed. Everything about Evening Shadows is pandering and simplistic. The story follows Kartik (Devansh Doshi) as he returns from the big city to his family home and spends a weekend with his mother, Vasudha (Mona Ambegaonkar). He comes out to her and she reacts almost comically horrified. Then they pass the time discussing his vanilla gayness, how he's just like everyone else, until she has to take on her son's identity as part of her own and accepts him.

As is often the case with these "gay is okay" films Kartik isn't a real person, complicated or flawed. He's handsome and loving, but of coarse cliched in his sensitivity and attraction to "women's activities" like cooking. He has a stunningly handsome and perfectly supportive partner back in Mumbai who basically just talks to him on the phone to offer support mostly wearing tank tops or hanging out shirtless so the gay audience can ogle his body. The journey Kartik and Vasudha go on is rife with safe and predictable beats as they work through her conservative values to get to the truth about how she loves him no matter what. While there is something inherently insulting about being told you are loved despite being who you are, I can put that aside for my real beef with the film is just how corny it is most of the time. No one is a real person here. Kartik's father and the rest of the conservative world around him are just as two dimensional as he is.

I struggle with the cultural relativism that would make a movie like this have to be so cliche and so uninspiring. Regardless of what it might do for folks who struggle to be okay with the queer people around them, for me it offers nothing, not an interesting story, no remarkable performances, and certainly not an examination of Indian life as a queer person.

Evening Shadows
Starring: Mona Ambegaonkar, Devansh Doshi, Ananth Mahadevan, Arpit Chaudhary
Director: Sridhar Rangayan
Writers:  Saagar Gupta, Sridhar Rangayan