Friday, March 1, 2024

Raj Jain | Ammi / 2019

the kiss in the mirror

by Douglas Messerli

 

Raj Jain (screenwriter and director) Ammi / 2019 [8 minutes]

 


   It appears that a Pakistani family who seem to be fairly assimilated into US culture, are finally having to face serious issues. The young son, Ibrahim (Karn Kalra), is disturbed by his father’s emails, particularly when he sends a message that he would like to meet Ammi’s boyfriend. The boy approaches his mother, Sanaa (Cindy Pusad), disturbed by the message, while she, who has been married to her husband for 33 years, has grown accustomed to the fact, while clearly knowing that her husband is also gay and has been regularly out with gay men many a night. She describes it as his attempting to make amends.

 

     The son, Ibrahim, even admits to his lover Jimmy (Joseph Pugh) that he has never felt he has had a father in Taahir (Afrog Khan), the man who went missing from his life as well. It is a strange reaction to someone who shares the same sexual desires; but he, evidently, cannot accept them in a father, who perhaps, in his imagination, should be a normative heterosexual. 

     Moreover, the situation is made even more complex by the fact that the dinner to which they invite their son’s boyfriend is the father’s anniversary with Ammi’s mother. 

   Things seem to go quite nicely, with the boyfriend complementing his friend’s mother for the wonderful meal, while also paying attention to the father. But when he asks to visit the bathroom, the husband, rather inexplicably, leads the way, the boy’s mother catching the two of them, her son’s boyfriend and her own husband, in a deep kiss in the mirror as she passes the room.


      She packs her bags, seemingly ready to leave. When he claims, that is not what good mothers do, she counters, that kissing her son’s own boyfriend is not what good fathers do. She hands her always absent husband his own bags, demanding he leave in her stead, which he has no choice but to do.

      Strangely, in this film it is neither her son’s or husband’s homosexuality that is the question, but her husband’s attempt to usurp in his sexual desires even with her son’s boyfriend that determines her actions.

 

      This fascinating work of homosexual acceptance might have resulted in a kind of coming out movie, for either father or son. But in this case, since everyone is out, it is only the rejected mother who must make her decisions, challenges which she finally recognizes when her own son’s lover has become the object of her husband’s desires.

      Jain’s work, accordingly is an oddly perverse story that doesn’t quite fit into the typical homosexual canon, but is more interesting for that very reason. My only wish is that this short film were more professionally accomplished. This movie does not seem to be listed even on IMDb, nor on any of the other typical film sites. I feel fortunate to have found it on the Audprop site of award queer films.

 

Los Angeles, March 1, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema Blog (March 2024).

 

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