BackTHE SEX TALK: A twisted fairytale is still very straight
In something as heteronormative as a fairytale, could a queer love story ever be told?
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Indika Udugampola, a Sri Lankan filmmaker living in France wanted to make a film about human relations. He said this at a small question and answer session after his film La Nuit est Encore Jeune (The Night is Still Young) was screened at the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI) on Friday. This was the director’s debut feature and he said that was he was surprised at finding an audience in India for his film, because it was ‘so dark’.
The 82-minute film tells the story of Chantal, a lesbian who stays in a non-descript town in France, a butcher by profession, living in ‘a house too big for a lone woman’ and Lucia, an immigrant possibly of Eastern European descent, who dreams of becoming a classical singer and walks into Chantal’s shop one morning and captures her imagination. Before long, the two begin to live together and become a couple - they even ride a couple’s bicycle to the boucherie, where by now, Lucia has begun to work. It’s all cloyingly tra-la-la till a man comes along - the trash collector, Antoine - who tickles Lucia’s fancy.
The story-telling is slow-paced, dialogue, minimal and a tune that Lucia hums forms the aural backdrop to the idyll they inhabit. The narrative has a compelling scaffolding: the fable of a princess looking for true love. Both, Lucia and Chantal couch their respective stories - they ones they tell themselves and each other - in this fairy tale. Lucia is the princess who has travelled far and wide for a thousand days in search of a prince ‘who deserves her love’. Chantal is the frog under the spell of a witch who is waiting to be transformed by true love. Not all fairy tales have happy endings, they tell each other, even as they promise to live with and love one another. When Antoine enters the scene, the film offers little by way of explanation of why Lucia falls for him. This part of the story, predictably and like most fairy tales, is not explained. It happens and we all must deal with the consequences of it.
The film is lyrical, and wonderfully composed. In the end, many members of the audience marvelled at the director’s ability to narrate so simple a story of what is ultimately about human love and emotions. Chantal’s jealousy triggered some laughter among the audience, and when we asked Udugampola if his film would release in Sri Lanka, he said that it would face trouble at the censor board. But the reason he gave was not the same-sex relationship it depicted, but Chantal’s Buddhist chantings that would irk politicians.
I found his observation very telling - it spoke at once of a certain normalisation of same-sex relationships (the film would get an A certificate, it wouldn’t be banned because of it) despite the fact that the Indian Penal Code’s Section 377 which criminalises same-sex relationships in India is similar to a law against gross indecency in Sri Lanka - both countries were under colonial rule, and both laws are a legacy of the British. In 1995, Sri Lanka even amended that law to make it gender neutral. Well, that’s one sort of equality.
But I digress. The question that I feel needs to be asked is this: Do we ever question the moral imperative of fairy tales, especially when we’re challenging them through retellings? Is it enough in queer retellings to merely replace heterosexual affection with same-sex affection? In other words, in something as heteronormative as a fairytale, could a queer love story ever be told?
I keep returning to the metaphor of the number base. We think that numbers mean one, two, three and four because we have agreed through consensus that the numerical base is the base of ten. But if the base were shifted to say, four, the numbers as we know them would be very different. When the base is heterosexual normal (heteronormative), can our fairytales really show anything queer? Put another way, how much queerness would it take to change the fable, if the very base remains unchanged?
I posed this question to a queer friend who said very rightly that sometimes it is imperative to offer stories of difference to people in a form they understand, because that’s the only way to open their eyes. But the problem with fitting a new story in an old form is that a lot may get left out. For example, Chantal’s depression and jealousy isn’t the same depression and jealousy Antoine would have faced had the situation been reversed. Chances are the audience wouldn’t have laughed.
Perhaps there are no easy answers to these questions, or perhaps the answer is fairly obvious to some. Either way, it is essential for us when confronted with images of queerness to ask if they challenge the basis of our assumptions. That could be a start of a real retelling.
Shortly after publishing this post, a reader wrote in with a couple of lines of their version of a queer fairytale. So I asked more readers to do the same. The response was fabulous. Here’s a pick of some of the stories that came our way.
A monthly blog on gender, sexuality and blind spots.
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