Heartbreaking and clear-eyed, Deepa Mehta’s visually striking adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s award-winning novel ranks among her best work. The hero is the precocious Arje, whose discovery of his sexuality in late 1970s and early 1980s Sri Lanka coincides with rapidly escalating tensions between his country’s Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority. His beloved aunt dotes on him, but he’s tormented by his martinet father, who stubbornly refuses to see how divided the country is until it’s too late. Mehta expertly shuttles between home and the world (to cite Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray), wisely noting that while the latter can do untold damage, it can be the dismissal of a family member that cuts the deepest.
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