Elephants in the Fog Review | Abinash Bikram Shah’s Mesmerising Debut Lights The Way With Love and Defiance

In his feature debut, Elephants in the Fog, Nepalese director Abinash Bikram Shah invests the narrative temper with a fragile yet ferocious heart. In a tiny Nepalese village flanked by a forest where elephants prowl, Pirati (Pushpa Thing Lama), the film’s magnificent, tenacious heroine, watches over her Kinnar community. She’s a beloved matriarch, terrifically protective of her three feisty daughters­–Joon, Chameli and Apsara. But romantic love also tugs at Pirati, smattering seeds for disaster. Shah stages these two not as reconcilable, but twin forces that contest each other.

Notably, Elephants in the Fog scores Nepal’s historic first-time Un Certain Regard selection at the Cannes Film Festival. There couldn’t have been a more radically tender, devastatingly compassionate start. Scene after scene, the film attests to Shah’s wrenchingly humane vision. There’s grimness but also resilience, a spirit that won’t easily crumple. Along with her daughters, Pirati is a symbol of resistance, an inclusive love that recognises no conditions. Thankfully, Shah never gets mired in depicting her with hollow, overwrought gestures. In Pushpa’s deeply embodied performance, Pirati endears herself to us as a woman who has battled long. She’s worn out, but stoutly clutches onto her dreams.

This is a film about belonging, fronted by a chosen family. Once the kinnar community welcomes, there’s a haven as long as it can fight for its survival. Safety may be found in its shade, briefly. But what happens when one yearns for more? How do kinship lines shift when the community rules are bypassed? There’ll be an aftermath. Is Pirati prepared?

Pirati fears the elephants as much as worships them. The community volunteers one of their people daily for the night patrol. The men of the village couldn’t care less, getting their giddy shot from terrorising tactics. They revel in the firecrackers. It deeply upsets her but she has no power to protest. Pirati and her people know well enough that the village doesn’t need much to oust them. They are on eggshells. The common gaze reduces them to unwanted intruders. Yet the same villagers genuflect, suiting agenda, to seek the community’s blessings.

Riven between duty and desire, obligation and autonomy, Pirati struggles to find steady ground. Her decision to move in with the drum master is rent by major stakes. Scenes of delicacy and promise with him are laced with precarity. If she follows her love, she risks a boycott, alienation from the community that sheltered her, saved her at her lowest. She has already breached the celibacy vow. Pirati sneaks away to the city for trysts with her lover. It affords anonymity, a freedom of being unavailable back home. Suddenly, one morning, Apsara (Aliz Ghimire) disappears.

The tight-knit village space means there are watchful eyes aplenty. One is held back in a familiar role and identity. Aided by Sandeep Badal’s poignantly effective dialogues, Shah’s screenplay forges kinship bonds Pirati is hemmed within. There’s no allowance to be someone else, pursue pleasures which the community sees as contraband. Every tentative step Pirati makes toward romance is haunted by looming consequence. This pursuit is inseparable from fear, social rejection and shame. Honour and dignity get caught in its crosshairs. She has to constantly measure how far she can go with her transgression. If she rocks the boat too much, the tie to her family would be snapped. Even Apsara grudges her mother’s sexual life, given how Pirati is always monitoring her from straying. Pirati would lose the social mantel of being the mother. The master teases her to step out. A future in Delhi is posed. Shah, however, astutely hints at a loneliness of never really being understood or empathised with. Even Pirati’s lover is frustrated with her for being concerned about her daughters, the family she’s built.

Pirati’s dilemma is further exacerbated by the pull of expectation. Guru Mata (Umesha Pandey, formidably wielding a low tone), on whose every guiding word the clan is perched, imposes on Pirati. The latter, who aches to be free, is saddled with a greater ask. Guru Mata hopes for her to take over the reins soon. Pushpa sparely registers Pirati’s helplessness, the crush of quiet despair. She came with her plea regarding the master. But she’s not heard, rather snubbed and thrown something else. She must tiptoe around her desires, mute it, hide it. Pandey is also chilling in another moment as Guru Mata warns Pirati about her hopes being just grand delusions. “Elephants think they can hide behind trees, but it’s an illusion”, the chief hisses. She cannot really escape herself, her fate. There’s such pining in Pushpa’s gaze her small world cannot hold it all. Pushpa lends Pirati a stolid front that nevertheless also cracks with emotion. Shah never cheapens the moral conundrums at the heart of his story into overly sentimental showdowns. There’s a calm lucidity, slowly collecting its seething wounds, cradled in Pushpa’s measured, bristling performance.

Shah maps out the Kinnar rituals in ways that go from gentle to euphoric to ruthless. We witness initiation rites, wedding performances, pitiless stripping of a social position. DP Noé Bach’s lensing is immaculate. A standout night-time ritual sequence with the women in a row by the river carrying light is breathtaking. Amidst celebration, Pirati’s tragedy fills the frame. It’s elegiac and evocative of the film’s elemental contradictions. Shah drives the exclusion, the instability the community is burdened with. In a charged scene, Pirati lashes at the village women who threaten them into fleeing. Reminding then, the community has done more for the village than any of them. Andrew Bird and Paris J. Ludwig’s edit exquisitely accelerates intensity, desperation and emotional suspense. Everything seems to close in on the Kinnar family.

Elephants in the Fog leads up to what may well be among the most stingingly powerful finale of any film this year. I had shivers. Simmering loss, hurt and humiliation escalate into outright hostilities, an absolute declaration of defiance. Rage that the women have held deep within erupt, finding allies in the other beleaguered pack. The ending leaves a gut punch that echoes long after credits roll. Elephants in the Fog cements Abinash Bikram Shah as one of the most exciting, propulsive new voices.