Reflective Encounters

“A stain is just a stain unless it’s blood imprinting the mark of an extramarital affair onto Geetha’s untarnished couch. A flustered man, his heavy thrusts on top of her tense body, the smudges that don’t seem to come off: all of these details paint a disquieting picture of an otherwise banal situation. Within the carefully constructed setting of Geetha’s orderly apartment, Vehd’s slightly neurotic presence feels like a thorn in the eye: once the fading lights recede from the room’s shadowy corners, the playful gestures seem to have soured.

When the two meet, there is a carnival of smiles, sighs, and trembling voices dancing around the various furniture: the sofa, the chairs, the bookshelf. With a hesitant invite on behalf of her (“Are you gonna come...in?”), Vehd takes a determined step in and he is now inside: surrounded by her microcosmos and is asked to embrace it. By contrasting the initial tenderness of the film’s opening, director Shuchi Talati lures the viewer in a world of fading lights receding for shadows to grow, of camera swoons until it can do so no longer, of bodies entwining but only to part.”

— Savina Petkova