Recensioni de* critic*

[Cactus Pears] is certainly bold in its storytelling, and yet as the tale progresses, it is also subtle and restrained. Kanawade’s directorial hand is deliberate and his choices calmly executed, but as the narrative unfolds, the film benefits from gradually accumulated weight and complexity.

There are few gentler films you’ll find this year than Rohan Kanawade’s “Cactus Pears.” A touching queer romance whose subtle rhythms pull us into its tender embrace... With a film whose most seismic truths arise from modest gestures, Kanawade has crafted a work that asks us to consider how love can be born from loss.

Much of Kanawade’s film is composed of static long takes tracing [the protagonists'] slow-burning journey to intimacy... [Cactus Pears] conveys the burdens confronting the men while circumventing clichés of the covert queer romantic drama.

Cactus Pears is stylistically bare, and notably so... Kanawade and cinematographer Vikas Urs shoot Cactus Pears with little flash. The film’s images are studied, at times beholden to a canny interplay between background and foreground.

Achingly luminous... [Cactus Pears] dips in and out of dreams and the all-too-real in ways that leave you longing... An impeccably crafted film with stunning score, cinematography and sublimely understated performances.

In less assured hands, Cactus Pears might have edged into trite territory, yielding to the familiar beats of trauma-laden queer love stories, but Kanawade’s considered direction and spare storytelling keep the narrative refreshing. The director pulls along two threads that run parallel until they unexpectedly intertwine near the end.

There is a deep sense of authenticity about the village setting, and the whole film is handled with a rare degree of sensitivity. It’s a thoughtful, lyrical ode to a disappearing way of life, full of respect for its contributions to modern, urban India.

A rural gay story that begins in a state of mourning and melancholy, it eventually takes on radiant form, with emotional complexities born out of characters walking around the truth, if only because euphemisms are the only language they have.

Cactus Pears is a subdued, sensitive study of bereavement and the quietly radical act of being queer in a rural, lower-class Indian community... The film, like its central character, is notable for its quietness. With no overbearing score clamouring for attention, we are free to tune in to the cicadas and the sound of birds, a world away from the cacophonous city to which Amand longs to return.

[Cactus Pears] is a film speckled with stretches of sensuousness and moments of overdue, barrel-shaped embraces, shot decisively with unapologetic realism or transportive reverie... The film’s honesty, whether loquacious or laconic, sears even more in the absence of a score.