Keerthivasan B | Love’s Green Patch / 2024

bodies and beds

by Douglas Messerli

 

Keerthivasan B (screenwriter and director) Love’s Green Patch / 2024 [15 minutes]

 

This Indian Tamil-language production is a truly amateur work, with basically one set, evidently a dorm house on an Indian college campus, although that is never established, and we can’t quite be sure why the two boys Raja (Dhilip Khana) and Deva (Devakirhnan) are sharing a room in a building where an unwelcome friend (Mohamed Nafeel) occasionally visits, and is not made to feel welcome, particularly when he smokes. If nothing else, the boys never seem to be studying.

    The two boys are very close friends, sharing a single bed even though another bed lies at an angle to it close by. They are also very hands on, seen often as they lounge upon the bed, with arm around the other’s neck or a hand left lying on the other’s shoulder, the phenomenon of which their friend quite clearly notices either negatively judging their behavior or feeling a twinge of jealousy—we can’t be sure.

   The conversations are few since they spend most of their time on their cellphones, talking occasionally to one another as if reciting lines instead of communicating in natural manner. Their comings and goings, moreover, are episodic, announced by a movement to the other bed or an invitation for lunch or tea. And there are three major events in their life together as presented in this short movie.

     The first seems of minor importance. Raja wants to paint their room green, an odd color Deva argues. Who paints a room in green?

     In the second of the events, Raja breaks up with his would-be girlfriend (Vandhana Varghese) by simply answering her request to go out together by saying that he’d like to remain best friends with the possibility of a relationship at some time in the future. She gets the message and immediately leaves him.

     The slower minded, but more handsome Deva, later wonders why Raja has stayed single, noting that if someone wanted a relationship with him he’d be there, steadfastly waiting. But perhaps he

doesn’t quite mean what he’s saying since when Raja finally reports that he’s gay, it somewhat troubles him, particularly when their friend reenters to spot them laying beside one another, with Raja’s hand upon Deva’s body.

      Deva finally perceives what their close relationship might mean. And even when he rides with Deva on the latter’s motor scooter, his hands change from holding on to his friend to balancing them on back of the scooter. And finally, he gets up in the midst of one of their afternoon naps, leaves, and doesn’t come back until the next morning.

      Raja clearly notes the change in their friendship, and even when Deva joins him on the bed, he moves aside to give him more room, moving away even when Deva puts up his foot as if to reestablish the closeness they once maintained.

      Yet we perceive that Deva’s absence has signified a time of thinking about the situation. Is he perhaps now comfortable with the news of his dear friend’s sexuality? Or just perhaps, is he himself in love with his friend, without even knowing it?

     No clear answer to that latter question is given. But what Deva does finally offer Raja is like a tiny signifier of his faithfulness, a small patch of green paint he slathers not on their bedroom wall, but on the outside of the building itself.

      I don’t know what green might signify in East Indian culture, or in the Tamil language. But surely it must have, as it does in English, a notion of the restorative, of the tranquility of nature. Perhaps it even suggests, as it does in English, the idea of proceeding, as in a green light, a kind of sign that they might “go ahead” in their friendship, relationship, love—whatever it is. Certainly the English-language titles suggests it’s love.

 

Los Angeles, September 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).