Soongava: Dance of the Orchids

Soongava: Dance of the Orchids has enough plot in it to fill at least three movies. Whatever else I say about this movie, it certainly does not lack ambition nor passion on the part of its creators.

This films tells the story of two traditional Nepalese dancers, Diya and Kiran. Diya and Kiran’s relationship goes from being platonic to romantic in the first act. This occurs despite pressures from Diya’s parents for her to marry. Diya and Kiran defy the expectations of their families and move in together. Trouble brews in their relationship though where Diya’s one heterosexual encounter leads to her being pregnant. After this hurdle is cleared, Diya’s family goes into hardcore villain-mode and get Kiran arrested for allegedly holding Diya hostage.

Soongava really does cover a staggering amount of ground for a movie under 90 minutes. Sadly, it’s to the film’s detriment. Soongava feels rushed. Any number of plot points could have sustained a feature length movie: from Diya and Kiran’s relationship turning from friendship to love; Diya going against her family’s wishes and moving in with Kiran; the struggles that two women face raising a child together; or, though I definitely didn’t like this plot point, Diya and Kiran’s lives being generally ruined by Diya’s homophobic relatives. Having all these plot lines in one movie made it feel unfocused and like it skipped over what could have been some very effective scenes. For example, the scene where Diya announces her engagement to Kiran is in a brief montage. What could have been a very emotional scene and key motivation for both characters moving forward is minimized.

This movie is at its best in its effortless blend of universal themes within a specifically Nepalese setting. The relationship between Diya and Kiran’s relationship is one that would work in any setting around the world. However, some of the pressures they face from outside sources such as arranged marriage are hurdles that are more culturally specific. There is also a celebratory aspect of their depiction of Nepalese culture such as having Diya and Kiran both be traditional Nepalese dancers. This blend of cultural celebration, cultural critique and universal themes is a very impressive balance that I am in complete awe of.

The movie is at its worst when it delves into cinematic cliches. There’s a scene scored by an acoustic female artist while one character drives at night and cries. It features that old trope I hate where the relationship between Diya and Kiran in the span of 10 minutes goes from them being friends to confessing their feelings to kissing to having full-on lesbian sex. There’s the singular heterosexual experience leading to pregnancy trope. These moments feel less creative. Lots of area this movie covers are things you can see in other movies and indeed, other WLW movies.

The worst use of cliche this movie does though is that it does bury one of its gays. And this comes out of nowhere. This movie starts as a pretty happy romance. Even though it does get tonally darker as it continues, Kiran getting murdered is still not in finding with the tone this movie followed up until that point. It was overly melodramatic and felt very shoe-horned in. I think they were trying to generate sympathy from the viewer because we like these characters and one of them is senselessly murdered. But like most gays, I’ve had about enough of this sort of thing, especially when it really does not seem to be in finding with the tone of the rest of them movie.

Soongava perhaps suffers from being too ambitious. What this movie needed to do was slow down a hell of a lot and explore more of the minutiae of this relationship instead of giving us what felt like a sample platter of things that might happen to two lesbians living in Nepal. As it stands, the movie goes from being a sweet romance to being increasingly dramatic and ending in tragedy. Maybe had this been a trilogy of films, this shift in tone would have worked. But in a 90-minute movie, everything in Soongava felt far too rushed.

Overall rating: 5.8/10

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