At one level, ‘Shape of Momo’ unfolds like a gentle love letter to one’s roots. Set in Sikkim, it unpeels the many layers equally. A festival favourite, with its world premiere at the 30th Busan International Film Festival in 2025, it won the Songwon Vision Award and the Taipei Film Commission Award.
The narrative begins innocuously. Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung), back in her home in a village in Sikkim, is reading what seems like a poem. Soon, we meet women representing three generations. In this home bereft of male presence, women nurse their own set of fears and anxieties and, above all, an urgency to conform. Only, Bishnu, fresh from experiences of the outside world, is not ready to accept things the way they are and has several run-ins with the men of her village.
Ideally, these men in subservient positions should obey her orders with no questions asked. But don’t men in our country feel a sense of superiority when it comes to women, whatever may be their class or authority? In one of the many key scenes in the film, her sister Junu (Shyama Shree Sherpa) literally has to be Miss Goody Two Shoes for the errand boy to agree to a simple request of hers.
The presence of men in their lives is underlined by their emphatic absence. An absent husband… and then that overarching desire to bear a male child. In a country where obsession for the male progeny often surfaces in the most hideous ways, the director keeps this deep-seated yearning to bear a male child calm yet impactful. In a way, it’s also a running thread. More than once, we see her fully pregnant sister listening to videos and suggestions which enumerate telltale signs foretelling the gender of the unborn child.
Needless to say, in the hands of a woman director, Tribeny Rai, also the co-writer along with producer Kislay Kislay, we see the film through a gendered perspective. It’s a female gaze for sure, looking at the world and themselves through the lens and sensitivity that defines her. In a women-centric film, not only are most central characters women, but those behind the camera too are mostly women.
Expectedly, tenderness is like a leitmotif and an undercurrent that envelops you in its embrace. You can sense that delicate female touch in almost every frame of the film’s runtime of 114 minutes. Mark the scene where her new-found friend and love interest, architect Gyan (Rahul Nawach Mukhia), is made to pose “like a woman” by Bishnu.
Sound designer Ankita Purkayastha makes us hear the natural sounds of water gurgling, breeze and even footsteps. Cinematographer Archana Ghangrekar captures the varying moods of the film and constructs the visual language with a languid flourish. Light falling on the faces of three women, the shadow of the grill on their faces and then how in the dead of night, when they dare not step out, binoculars become their gateway to the outside world.
Much here is symbolic and Tribeny is in no rush to tell this simple story, largely autobiographical. The tone never gets screechy or preachy either. Subtle hints allude to gender inequality. Why is the husband’s name important in papers when it’s the woman who bears all the discomfort of bringing a life into this world? Pointers alluded to, but not spelt out loud. Then there is the societal divide, where men too bear the burden of not only family, but also their egos. The manner in which an orchard caretaker’s son refuses to accept Bishnu’s offering of apples is truly remarkable.
The lines of the song — “if you are a flower you see the world as a flower and if thorn, you see the world as a thorn” — do not immediately follow his predicament. But lyrics are a strong reminder of how personal experiences and circumstances shape our worldview.
In the world Tribeny creates, actors don’t just belong to the milieu but are born to the tale told in Nepali with a smattering of Hindi. Natural acting of the entire cast is matched by an organic flow of events. The mother-daughter bonding, the ties between sisters; there is more than one heartwarming moment in the film. The finale tugs at your heartstrings and leaves you with a lump in your throat.
‘Shape of Momo’, the title, is not a cursory reference to the staple food of the Northeastern state, but far deeper. The imperfect shape of Bishnu’s momo is a metaphor. What happens when you don’t fit into the scheme of things and no longer belong to a place to which ideally you should? Well, you choose your own path, even though the one you left behind will always live deep inside you.
Running in theatres, check it out to know what compelled Payal Kapadia, Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar to board the film as executive producers. For, here is a film whose quiet beauty does not feel like a performance but a lived-in experience.
To borrow from the film’s own words for the “city-weary”, ‘Shape of Momo’ is a fragrant whiff of fresh air. Without exoticising anything, least of all Sikkim, it’s that rare and relatable exploration of shades of womanhood: “Balancing a world that never balances for her.”
