SLIFF 2016 Review – SILA SAMAYANGALIL

SILA SAMAYANGALIL screens Sunday, Nov. 6 at 8:00pm at The Hi-Pointe Backlot as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Producers Radhika Chaudhari and Rajan Kanul will be in attendance. Ticket information can be found HERE

A dramedy with a strong message of social awareness, SILA SAMAYANGALIL focuses on eight characters from different walks of life who provide their blood samples for an AIDS test. In the pathology lab where the screening occurs, those tested are forced to cool their heels as the blood is processed. To avoid the tension of waiting, they collectively decide to bribe the technician, who provides partial results: Only one among the group has AIDS. Far from relieving their worries, this frustratingly incomplete information only ratchets up the anxiety. When the individual results finally become available, each of the eight is called in to receive the news and, one by one, walks out with relief, offering sympathy to the dwindling few who remain. At the end, when only two are left — including the film’s protagonist — SILA SAMAYANGALIL takes an unexpected and highly emotional turn.

Review of SILA SAMAYANGALIL by Cate Marquis

SILA SAMAYANGALIL is a social drama set in southern India’s Tamil region, from Indian director Priyadarshan Soman Nair. The title translates as “on some situations” and the major focus of this surprisingly tense drama is the issue of AIDS among India’s Tamil. Although the SLIFF program notes describe it as a dramedy, there is little funny in this drama about people waiting at a medical testing clinic and, in fact, the film becomes increasingly dark and on edge as it unfolds.

Its little bit of humor comes early on, when near the film’s start, people waiting in line at a medical testing lab, where people are tested for everything from cholesterol to HIV, joke about bureaucracy and government inefficiency. The film actually opens with a young woman who is late for her job as a clerk at the medical testing facility. She is constantly on the phone with her mother, about the rent due for their home, money they do not have. Wrapped up in her own crisis, she is not very concerned about the patients.

At the clinic, people wait in long lines to turn in paperwork for their medical tests, while clinic staff indifferently process their forms, loudly asking questions about their tests without concern for their privacy or feelings. This callous treatment reveals one older man  is there for an HIV test. Clearly embarrassed and nervous, the older man getting an HIV test avoids a friendly younger man who tries to strike up a conversation.

The test results are not made available until 5 PM, so they are both forced to hang around the gritty town. As they wait, we get scenes of grubby, traffic-filled market street, with street vendors and street-side games of chance, whose operators vanish when they see a cop.

In the early afternoon, the clinic is no longer taking new test requests but the two men are now in a nearly empty waiting  room, along with a handful of other men and one young woman. Although it seems they are all stuck hanging around for hours waiting for HIV test results, no one wants to admit why they are there, except for the friendly young guy. He is a pharmacist who knows the HIV test actually only takes a short time, and he comes up with idea to bribe clerk who needs money for rent, so they can get their results sooner. As they pool their money for the bribe and then wait while she gets the results, they share stories about who they are and how they may have been exposed to AIDS. Their stories illustrate social issues about AIDS and its transmission in the Tamil region.

As the characters wait to find out their test results, the film develops the tense feel of a thriller through some unexpected twists, which adds effectively to the film as a drama and to its impact as a message film, in this surprisingly wrenching drama.

The stories are varied, as are the people telling them. Although the characters’ situations represent a sampling of real-life scenarios, from a rape to drug experimentation to prostitution, the stories are all revealed in a naturalistic fashion by characters all feel like real people – some of them nice and some not so nice. This group is surprisingly well-educated, likely a deliberate choice by the director to underscore that people from any background can be at risk for AIDS. This region of India has among the highest rates of AIDS in the country, as noted at the film’s end, and the disease is often transmitted through prostitutes and passed along by traveling truck drivers. None of these characters are truck drivers but this factual detail is revealed in the conversations. Titles at the end further spell out the facts and the director’s intentions in making the film.