There is a claustrophic feeling all throughout Snigdha Kapoor’s Live Action Short Film contender, Holy Curse. Remember when you entered adolescence and it felt like everyone was in your business? You could never get away from anyone’s gaze, and everyone in your family thinks that you need to live your life a certain way. In Kapoor’s film one young teenage defies their family’s wishes and the rules set in place when they declare their gender identity. Not only does Holy Curse showcase one young person’s defiant passion, but it shows how the rules are meant to be broken.
Radha’s family visits India from the United States, because the adults want to cleanse them of a curse that assume has been placed on them. Their uncle acts like he knows best, and Radha’s cousin teases them, shoving a doll in their hands as if they must carry it with them at all times to identify the gender they were assigned as. This family drama has some real family drama.
**We have linked Holy Curse here via The New Yorker‘s YouTube. Consider watching the film before reading our conversation with Kapoor.
Kapoor and I could’ve spent our entire conversation talking about how we felt when we were younger. I expressed how you are born free but then society pushes ideals and ideas onto you. You become self-conscious, and you are worried that you are going to look a certain way or people will judge you. She wanted her audience to immediately relate to Radha’s frustration and anger. Remember when you felt like a ball of anxious nerves all the time? Now imagine being told you need to act a certain way in your more impressionable time.
“I had so many questions when I was writing the film, and I wanted all of that to come through Radha’s perspective,” Kapoor says. “The anxiety, the vulnerability. This film was very much inspired by how I felt when I was growing up. When you’re young, your life us so fluid, and you’re not thinking about the ideas of society and the structure of the norms. You’re being yourself. I grew up playing all the sports that boys my age did, and because I came from a very traditional, conservative environment, people are not open or they have set ideas of traditions. When I was growing up, my father called me “beta,” which is a Hindi term for son. It’s very common practice for parents to call their children that, whether it’s their son, daughter, or whoever.
I never questioned it until my body was changing and people started telling how I should and should not act. They would tell me how to talk, including my grandfather, who would always tell me that girls don’t do this or don’t do that. ‘Girls don’t sit like that’ or ‘Girls don’t talk.’ It was all very confusing for me. The way that gender was being enforced on my was not something I could understand, and I think that was the case for so many of my friends. I had a lot of anxiety, rebellion, vulnerability–all of that. I thought that being a girl might be weak. That is the kind of thing that I wanted the audience to feel.”
The first conversation we see is held between a door with Radha on one side and their family on the other. Holy Curse is as much about communication as it is about expression, as if speaks to how parents need to open their ears as much as they think they should speak. Later in the film, Radha has a talk with their cousin, and it feels like someone is listening for the first time.
“For Radha’s cousin, he doesn’t understand what Radha identifies as or not, but for him he thinks they’re acting too cool,” she says. “Radha’s not speaking in Hindi–they’re speaking in English. It’s just been two or three years since the family has been in the US, and [cousin thinks] they’re already acting a different way. There was another aspect of language that I wanted to address, because language makes you feel like you belong. It has a sense of community, that belongingness. Because Radha is not getting that sense of community through that language, they are rejecting that culture. Then, for the first time, when they speak in Hindi, it’s when they have that first moment of connection with their cousin when they ask if they’re a boy.”
One of my favorite aspects of the film is the volume of the music. In the beginning, Radha is having a conversation with their mother when the music blares and it cuts to everyone packed in a car. The score represents the bursts of emotions that we all feel when we are young–the anger, the frustration, and that feeling that we aren’t being heard. It sounds rebellious as it represents Radha’s feelings.
“Alex [Symcox] and I have worked in the past, and I feel like we are very connected spirtually when it comes to music,” Kapoor says. “In the case of this film, the music had to be loud, and it had to be out there while representing this dramatic world. It’s from a child’s perspective, and everything feels two times exaggerated. It feels a lot more like the world is hovering over them and pressuring them. Part of it was also because I am trained in Indian Hindustani classical vocal music. I have such respect for the art and traditional classic music, but at the same time, when we talk about these rigid norms and structures, it feels similar to that world of classical music. Any time that I wanted to do something more fluid or if I wanted to experiment with something, my guru would always tell me that I need to go back to the basics. Bach was one of the names that I always found more experimental within those structures of western classical music versus someone like Vivaldi. It’s all great, but there are those people who are able to kind of tweak their way out of those Bach structures of certain pieces of art.”
Because Holy Curse‘s story is so specific, Kapoor was eager to discuss the casting. Someone in the role od Radha couldn’t fake the emotions of what they are feeling at this sliver of time, so the filmmaker was very thorough to get what she wanted.
“I worked with a very respected casting agency in India led by Nandini Shrikent, but we were struggling until like seven days before the shoot before we cast Mrunal [Kashid] as Radha,” she reveals. “When they described the part to performers, they explained that they were looking for a tomboy. I have such a love/hate relationship with that word, because it’s enforcing the idea that boys have the freedom to be a certain way. When I asked what was happening, they told me that they were working through a lot of parental consent since we were working with someone who is under 13 years old. It was also very specific, because I wanted the child to have gone through the experience of menarche while not losing the vulnerability of experiencing that. Some parents felt that the story was very important and they wanted to support it, but they didn’t want to expose their daughters to these subjects or fear that they would get typecast down the line. Some parents are hoping that maybe their daughters can get into Bollywood and that idolizes beauty and femininity, but that’s all the more reason for us to broaden our reach. Mrunal’s mother was very supporting of her playing this role.”
I was drawn to Kapoor’s film from the first still image I saw of it (which is the image used on the poster). Radha bursts out of the family’s van an urinates in the wild grass as her family objects in the background. Before they turn to look back, Radha takes a moment to themselves, and we feel their body shaking with emotion. It’s like we can hear Radha saying, ‘You want to tell me what to do? Just wait.’
“In Asian cultures, we’re told to always respect our elders, our traditions, and our cultures,” Kapoor says. “Respect, respect, respect, which basically means stay silent. Don’t question, even if you don’t align with someone and that happens all the time. Because we are working with a short, I wanted a resolution for this character, but it had to be organic and it to be grounded. The biggest thing throughout this film is that this person has a curse because they’re confused abour their gender identity. We know that this person is going through changes intheir body. They’re sweating, they’re stinking, and they’re restless. They are telling their mother that something feels wrong, but no one is listening. The family thinks they are given trouble, but, in the end, when Radha does have their first period, everybody thinks that the curse is lifted. That scene is so imporant, because that is when Radha is mirroring the act that is performed by their uncle or the “preferred” gender. I wanted to underscore the difference between menarche and gender. If your physical body is different from your perceived gender, it has nothing to do with being connercted with each other. It becomes a powerful act. That moment had to be portrayed through how we placed everyone in the shot and who takes the frame with authority. Radha hears their uncle say, ‘I told you she’ll be cured’ and that kind of switches it for them. They are saying, ‘If you think this has changed me, it hasn’t.’ Radha is reclaiming their power and their identity.”
