Faroukh Virani | Khol (Open) / 2018

resentments

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alessandro Nori and Shawn Parikh (screenplay), Faroukh Virani (director) Khol (Open) / 2018 [12 minutes]

 

Kohl begins where many LGBTQ movies move toward or where they end. Two young men, Vijay (Shawn Parikh) and a friend are in bed fucking when the former gets a cellphone message, he pausing the other’s rhythmical thumps to share the message he’s just received: “My father just died.” The other remains at pause, but Vijay insists, “Keep going.”

 

    In the next scene we see Vijay, having arrived back in his New Mexico hometown, walking with his sister Vidya (Sarayu Blue) to her car.

      That radical juxtaposition says a great deal. It’s clear that the young lead of this short film lives a life very different from the one he’s left behind, 10 years ago so we soon discover, a world in which he must now reenter, facing up to the hurt feelings of family and friends.

      It starts almost immediately when his sister puts on a “Bollywood” song, he startled that she’s still playing it, and Vidya, in turn, being somewhat hurt since he seemingly can’t recall it was given to them by their father and as a young boy Vijay evidently even choreographed it (we soon after see a scene where he and his sister are dancing to it as children). Now as a long gone adult, Vijay hasn’t even bothered yet to call his mother.

   The mother has cooked her dead husband’s favorite dish, Vijay complaining that she still feels controlled by the dead man, his sister trying to quiet him, as the mother sternly insists that he has no respect.

      But the mention of their aunt’s arrival at the airport momentarily brings them all together again for a moment in their dislike of her. Even the mother sarcastically suggests that they call the airport and tell them she’s holding a bomb.

      A moment later, however, when Vijay suggests that that are no longer related to their father’s sister, the mother becomes stern once more and asks him to stop talking. The son gets up to leave, his siter responding that is how he has always dealt with family differences.

      Vijay decides to stay at a hotel, hurt that his sister never attempts to defend him. It is clearly a wrought situation, the gay son perhaps rejected by the father now returning home for the first time in such a long while. There is righteous resentment on both sides.

     Soon Vijay calls up two of his old gay friends, meeting them at the local bar. But even here there is an edginess, his former friend Chris (Sterling Jones) dishing that he’s sure by now that Vijay has slept with everyone in New York City, while Vijay retorts that he’s sure Chris and Timothy (Jason Rogel) have each slept with the three gay guys in the territory, Timothy joking, “Oh, there’s three of us?” Vijay mentions that he’s found one guy on Grindr 26 miles away, they speaking his name in unison dismissal, “Mark.”

      But there’s a darker history he as well. Ten years before it was Timothy who had posted “kissing photos” of Vijay and himself which, when his parents found them, they told Vijay to leave and come back when he was ready to “unshame them,” Chris adding, “And that’s when he (pointing at Vijay) decided to leave me at the side of the road.”

       Vijay admits he was an asshole back then.

     But the pain remains. How do you return home to those who still live in and are committed to a world in which you needed to leave forever? If one felt like an outsider living in such a world, he truly becomes one forever when he leaves it. As now a true outsider there is no way, as the cliché goes, to return home. Over time, everything seems even stranger than it was and you appear more of a stranger to those who have stayed on.

    The next day, Vijay returns to the family home, entering the kitchen to make a favorite Indian morning drink. As he remembers doing the same thing as a child, the water begins to boil; he’s spoiled it. At that very moment, his mother enters, taking on the task herself, telling him that he missed two major ingredients. As he gets them from the refrigerator and brings them to her, the two find themselves once again face to face, mother and son. Tears well up in her eyes, and he soon turns away with tears in his own eyes as well. Love has broken through at last, has opened up their hearts. But now there are no words for it, no room in which to fully share such different lives.

      

Los Angeles, May 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).