30/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: The Indian director presents a family drama and an unusual love story in a film that homes in on sexuality and sexual repression

Kanu Behl premiered his Indian-French co-production Agra [+see also:
film review
interview: Kanu Behl
film profile] in the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year's Cannes Film Festival. We spoke to the director about his main protagonist and the depiction of sexuality in his film.

Cineuropa: Where did the inspiration for your main character, Guru, come from?
Kanu Behl: In my early teenage years, and even through my mid-twenties, I personally felt a certain sexual repression and a delayed sexual maturity. That, coupled with the experiences of many other similar boys in my local area and the city around me, got me thinking about this specific problem and its relationship with the spaces we inhabit –and also how my own upbringing in tiny spaces might have affected my sexuality. All of this came together and became the inspiration for the film and for Guru.

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Sexuality is a topic that we do not often see in the Indian films that reach Western cinemas. Why was it important for you to show it so openly?
If I was going to follow my original impulse to talk about sexuality and sexual repression honestly, and truly make a piece that contributed to the conversation around sexuality in India and the larger film landscape, I knew very early on that I could not shy away from the depiction of sexuality and our bodies, and I couldn’t do it in any other way. It was important not to titillate through sexuality, but rather to use the body and the act of sex as a vessel to lay bare some larger truths about the human condition that were buried underneath.

How did you prepare the actors for these scenes?
I made quite sure that all of the team understood that none of the sex scenes were to be treated any differently from any other scenes, because they were not sex scenes for us. We concentrated on getting the emotional nuance of every scene right. We deliberately decided not to rehearse those scenes in advance. Instead, through a three-month workshop, we got to know each character as intimately as possible with the actors, so that they could find their own individual truth. We knew, if done right, that would spontaneously reveal the emotional truth of the sex scenes.

Guru and his girlfriend are two outcasts, but together they find new strength. What was the most important thing you wanted to show about their relationship?
On the one hand, it was the meeting of a “physically damaged” woman and a “mentally damaged” boy, at least in terms of how they were perceived by the outside world. In their individual incompleteness, they find a collective spiritual whole, where they look for trust and honesty. And yet, along with this, I also wanted Priti's own complexity and fragility to exist just as honestly – her fundamental desire for the house and her manipulation, co-existing with Guru's unfolding horror at his own sexual needs.

Is the housing situation you describe in the film a constant problem? Is it because there is a desperate need for people to move to the city?
The housing situation that we are seeing is a problem not just in India, but around the globe. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and that directly speaks to the larger socio-economic-cultural paradigm we are in. Maybe a decade ago, young people were more able to afford a house than they are now. That is an unfolding horror owing to the increasing apathy of the “ruling elite class”.

What does the squirrel that belongs to the new wife of Guru's father symbolise?
The squirrel is in a cage, and that is perhaps exactly how Guru feels about his own existence within the house and, to a larger extent, the existence of his deeply repressed sexuality within his being. He wants to rid himself of the cage desperately. Through the connection of the cage, I also wanted to build a spiritual connection between Guru and Aunty – his gaze towards her is also a product of how his father looks at women.

What would you like the audience to retain from the film?
What was important for me was to take the audience with me on a difficult journey with a protagonist who, without having the right vocabulary and while doing dastardly things which were unacceptable, was really the only person fighting for truth in the film. He was the only one battling the sexual repression. I wanted this journey to be almost a cautionary tale for the audience – a journey for them to experience through Guru – to show where days spent obsessing with the phallus eventually lead!