Mumbai<\/a>, returns to his ancestral village in Maharashtra for the obligatory 10-day mourning ritual. Bereavement quickly becomes secondary to obligation: funeral customs dictate every aspect of daily life, while well-meaning relatives chastise. Why isn\u2019t he married at 30? What is he thinking, going out in the sun? The scolding, however well-intentioned, never ends.<\/p>\nCactus Pears is less interested in bust-ups than in the cumulative weight of convention and familial obligation. Tradition functions as both spectacle and burden, leaving Anand little room to mourn, let alone come out to the clan. His mother quietly shields him from intrusive questions with a fabricated tale about a girl who broke his heart, but his relatives still want answers.<\/p>\n
Relief arrives in the form of Balya (Suraaj Suman), Anand\u2019s childhood friend, now a farmhand facing similar pressures to marry. Their tentative reunion unfolds through shared routines rather than declarations: tending goats, wandering fields, smoking and swimming together. Kanawade allows intimacy to emerge through lingering glances, brief touches and allusions to past romance: \u201cWhat do you remember about us?\u201d asks Balya. <\/p>\n
Pastoral pleasantries match the measured pacing: Anirban Borthakur and Naren Chandavarkar\u2019s sound design is composed of birdsong, rustling trees and temple bunting, and chirping insects. Working in an Academy 4:3 ratio, the cinematographer Vikas Urs zooms in on tender moments \u2013 stroked hair, toes pointing toward one another \u2013 while the frame speaks to lives shaped by restraint. <\/p>\n
Manoj gives a beautifully internalised performance, carrying grief, exhaustion and decades of self-censorship in his hunched stances, while Suman provides an earthy, quietly confident counterpart. Save for a noisy outburst from Balya\u2019s dad, who remains determined to marry his son off, Kanawade resists melodrama throughout, puppeting heartstrings with intimate gestures and dreams.<\/p>\n
At Queen\u2019s Film Theatre, Belfast, from Saturday, July 18th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cactus Pears \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 Director: Rohan Parashuram Kanawade Cert: None Genre: Drama Starring: Bhushaan Manoj,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,2568,60,21212,80],"class_list":["post-552163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-india","tag-ireland","tag-sundance-film-festival","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}