sexual terror
by Douglas
Messerli
Didula Induwara (screenwriter
and director) The Silent Honeymoon / 2023 [9 minutes]
This
is perhaps the very first LGBTQ+ movie that I have reviewed that appears in the
Sinhala language spoken in Sri Lanka. Yet it speak is a very clear cinematic
language any gay man can comprehend, a horror of a male having suddenly to
perform in a straight relationship.
The lead of this short film, played by Kusal
Maduranga, has clearly been forced by his family into an arranged marriage. And
now after all the marriage celebrants of left, he is left on a bed, which might
as well be a raft trying to make its way through the rampages of a white water
river. The central figure is first seen in the bathroom, desperately trying to
drown himself in the bathroom water basin as he attempts to clean his face and
simply shock himself awake with cold water.
His new bride (Mashi Senanayake), in the other
room, sits with a cellphone sending pictures and attempting to find the right
word to describe her new hubby: “baby,” “honey,” “darling,” refusing to use the
Sinhala word “Appachi,” the word for a village “father.” She giggles in
determinedly, trying to please her “crazy school days” crowd. In one of the
very few sentences the groom mutters in the film, he suggests she can call him
what he wants.
She praises the wonderful sari which has
been paid for from a family loan that will be paid off over time. She reports
how perfect the wedding was. He sits staring off in another direction trying to
keep himself simply from bolting the room while his own cellphone rings and
goes unanswered. We can guess why.
His bride decides it is her moment to
clean up, and enters the bathroom, while our “hero” sits in a deeply brooding
pout. She has left behind part of her sari, and he almost spontaneously takes
it up, enjoying the beauty of its decorative stitches and the embedded pearls
and rhinestones that make it glitter. He takes it up to place it his own
shoulder, when suddenly, in his imagination, his handsome gay lover appears,
sits on the bed near him and beings to stroke him, comforting his fears.
The love between them is clearly apparent,
as they hug and touch, and for a few moments the character seems almost
transported into sexual ecstasy—that is until she enters again with a cackle,
have finished her shower and obviously ready for the marital ceremony of
removing her from virginity (although we surely doubt she is a virgin).
Arranged and forced marriages in the
Asian world be damned!
Los
Angeles, May 13, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).
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