Fruits of passion: "Cactus Pears"

Anand (Bhushaan Manoj), the tousle-haired, muddle-headed thirtysomething who serves as the protagonist of the new Marathi film Cactus Pears, represents a very different idea of masculinity from that the Indian cinema has typically promoted in the Dhurandhar era. For one, he's vulnerable from the off. We first join him in a hospital waiting area, as he learns his ailing father has finally succumbed to complications of the kidney. Anand's complications, as soon become apparent, are those of the heart and the tongue. Over ten days of mourning in his father's leafy village, we cannot help but spot how this Mumbai-based IT wonk is at the mercy of protocol, rules and regulations, some societal, some entirely self-imposed. Relatives insist his unmarried status leaves him ineligible to perform key burial rituals; his father's passing means he must either marry within six months or wait three years, for reasons that can only be explained as local custom. All the conditions are in place for some sort of movie romance, perhaps even an unlikely romcom, but the film's mood initially seems too sombre to countenance much in the way of happiness. Instead, Anand sneaks away from the main event to spend more time in the company of Balya (Suraaj Suman), a gentle family friend - and contemporary of Anand's - who works as a farmhand. Balya is more assured than Anand: he knows who he is and what he wants, and is prepared to speak up for these in a way the more guarded Anand can't. He is, one could say, exactly the kind of stout and hardy fellow who might pull our guy out of his funk. But what about those blasted rules? And what on earth would the neighbours say?

Writer-director Rohan Kanawade sets about telling this story with some of All We Imagine As Light's hushed, attentive naturalism, although we're a long way from that film's enchanting urban sparkle. Instead, Kanawade proposes a rural alternative. Cactus Pears is a slower and quieter endeavour, as befits a setting where the characters can often be seen taking mid-afternoon naps in the shade of a tree. We, too, are afforded ample time to feel the breeze blowing over the hills and to hear the birds singing in those tree branches. But we're also attuned to those tensions creeping into these frames: between the individual and the family (and, indeed, between the individual and wider society), and - more specifically - between two men trying to speak their truths, but not so loud as for anybody else to notice. Nature, again, provides some solace and shelter: Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain has to have been some influence. But Kanawade, in an impressive feature debut, proves more worldly than dreamy. He knows the farm life can be a tough one, and he presents us with a genuinely complex character in Anand: a shy, sensitive, secretive, rather scared soul who's put up walls, kept his head down, lost his way and now sorely needs some form of shepherding. The title refers to a sweet fruit Balya brings in from the fields for Anand, having removed its thorns for easier consumption, but it's just possible Anand himself is the real prickly pear here: someone determined to keep the world at arm's length, who hardly appears an obvious recipient of life's happier endings. The film around these two men is simple, unflashy, somewhat unfashionable within the context of today's Indian cinema. Yet its anchoring bedrock of restraint preserves what's essential here: real-seeming people, with aching, bruised and yearning hearts.

Cactus Pears is now showing in selected cinemas.