But Bulbul and Bonnie treat him like one of the girls. The boys at school taunt him as “Ladies”, owing to his effeminate nature - they want to pull down his pants and check what’s really in there. Suman is as much a victim of patriarchy as Bulbul. It took me a while to understand that Suman is gay, though nobody there probably knows the word.
At first, this physical closeness surprised me. She reads them sprawled on her bed, with Suman sprawled out beside her. A smitten Porag (Manabendra Das), who goes to the same school, begins to write poems to Bulbul. It’s not a metaphor, exactly, but that’s all Bulbul wants: friends, the wide open spaces, and nothing to unbalance this idyll.Īlso Read: Rima Das On Premiering At TIFF, And Why It’s Important To Develop A Cinema Viewing Culture From Childhood Bonnie and Suman tie the ropes, while Bulbul tests the seat for balance.
In the opening scene, she’s setting up a swing on a branch, with her friends: a girl named Bonnie (Bonita Thakuriya) and a boy named Suman (Manoranjan Das). Till the birth of her brother, Bulbul’s parents dressed her like a boy, but now, her mother is all “Girls should be modest and calm” and “Pull down your frock.” But Bulbul isn’t rebelling. The pressures in Bulbul Can Sing are external - from family, from society, from the patriarchy. Village Rockstars was an internal journey. And slowly, the difference between the two films becomes apparent. Īs with Village Rockstars, music plays a part - but it’s Bulbul’s father who wants her to become a singer. She’s temporarily distanced herself from people.
And after a friend’s death, we see Bulbul playing with a grasshopper. Rows of lamps are balanced on plantain stalks, their warm glow mingling with the harsher light from crackers. Even the Diwali celebrations at Bulbul’s house look… natural. Das - as always, the slacker (she’s only managed to find time to also write, produce, edit, design the production and handle the cinematography the press notes are strangely silent about whether she’s also responsible for the sun and the rain that soak so many of her beautiful frames) - has a way of making her protagonists one with Nature. What if the protagonist of Village Rockstars were a few years older? What if she wasn’t driven by major ambition (becoming a musician)? What if she simply wanted to loll around in her village in Assam? Bulbul Can Sing, Rima Das’s follow-up to her breakout art-house hit, is about a teen named Bulbul (Arnali Das), who’s first glimpsed as a disembodied hand angled at the corner of the frame, resting near a fallen flower.
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