Songs of Forgotten Trees: a delicate tribute to female friendship and big-city resilience
Director Anuparna Roy searches for intimacy in the urban isolation of Mumbai with a slight, dreamy feature that unfolds like a series of memories.
An early montage in Songs of Forgotten Trees depicts Mumbai buildings filled with cramped, shoebox-sized apartments, an evocative visual for a film about Indian women scrambling for societal space. Within these walls, roommates Thooya (Naaz Shaikh) and Shweta (Sumi Baghel) are further hemmed in, filmed through slivers of doorway, inside a mosquito net and reflected in shards of a mirror. And yet, a fragile, tender intimacy between them finds room to expand.
Such is the female-centric cocoon writer-director Anuparna Roy weaves that the intermittent presence of men feels like an intrusion. Ingrained male entitlement stemming from a patriarchal culture is a recurring theme of Songs of Forgotten Trees, from the flat’s owner who feels owed access to Thooya’s body, to a customer who assumes that buying products from Shweta’s IT company also buys him her time. Even dreams become real estate for encroachment – Thooya’s mother, we’re told, drained her life in service of her husband’s, only for him to leave, then continue haunting her subconscious.
Big-city survival schemes hinge on shrinking oneself further. Both young women find themselves cast as performers, unable to just be. Thooya, a sex worker, roleplays for her clients and, as an aspiring actress, constantly runs lines for auditions. Shweta, working from home, delivers scripted responses in the rehearsed tones of a customer-care representative. Layers of put-on performance ironically reveal a piercing honesty in the film’s best scene, in which Shweta pretends to be the long-lost school friend Thooya has been desperately searching for, offering her a final cathartic conversation. Framed on either side of a wall, the women bridge a vast emotional distance. Even in the silos of urban isolation, Roy reminds us, there’s potential for companionship. Stilted dialogue delivery gives way to more natural chatter.
Unlike the prescribed societal paths both these women are prodded towards, Songs of Forgotten Trees doesn’t have a fixed overarching narrative, instead unfolding as a series of memories or impressions. Roy is interested in exploring who gets to shape a person’s life, from overbearing parents they’ve outgrown to missing friends they still think of.
Viewers might be reminded of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, another delicate Mumbai-set ode to female friendship and big-city resilience. Roy’s restraint, however, results in sections of the narrative feeling undercooked. Questions arise about the nature of the roommates’ relationship and their immediate futures, but the 77-minute-long film is ill-equipped to answer.
Scenes of both women trying on new clothes seem to ask: Can they shed the roles they’ve been allotted as easily? Existential worries persist, but Roy opts to linger on the small joys. In this city, freedom could be as simple as the sensation of the waves on your feet.