Arush Nand is very good as a gay Tamil boy in Deepa Mehta\u2019s coming-of-age drama set in a period building to civil war <\/p>\n
There is something a bit soapy and melodramatic about this queer coming-of-age drama from Sri Lanka, picked up by Ava DuVernay\u2019s company Array and released by Netflix. It\u2019s the tale of a gay Tamil boy, Arjie (played first by Arush Nand and later Brandon Ingram), growing up in the 1970s and 80s as tensions escalate between Tamils and the Sinhalese majority. The storytelling works better in the first half, with some heart-tugging scenes as puzzled little Arjie struggles to understand why boys are not allowed to wear lipstick and play the bride in dress-up games.<\/p>\n
Nand plays it beautifully. Arjie is an irrepressibly sunny eight-year-old from a privileged family, but his aunties smirkingly call him \u201ca funny boy\u201d \u2013 or as his cousin puts it, \u201ca sissy\u201d. His father is perpetually disappointed that his son is not interested in cricket. Only his cool well-travelled auntie, Radha (Agam Darshi), understands him, painting his toenails red in secret and taking him to the theatre. Every now and then, director Deepa Mehta switches young Nand for the actor who plays teenage Arjie (Ingram), and the older boy becomes a bystander to his childhood, watching on with an emotional ache.<\/p>\n