User Reviews

I saw this movie in a film festival and I enjoyed it a lot, specially how real it felt in the context of Nepalese tradition and culture and also enjoyed brilliant acting from both lead actresses and others.

SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!!

Making a Nepalese movie about lesbians must have been very challenging from the beginning for the filmmakers but I think they did an excellent job here. One thing I really liked was that the movie doesn't mention gay or lesbian word anywhere and it makes sense because in Nepal not many people know that gay relationship can exist and it is real thing, specially the older generation.

When I was watching movies in Seattle, a lot of people seemed curious about how common honor killing in Nepal and about laws that could allow parents to sue their grown up kids for living together.Being from Nepal, I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that this story is fictional and even though there are a few reported cases of honor killing in Nepal in last 20 years(there could be more unreported), it is not very common in Nepal. Also there is no law in Nepal that allows parents to interfere their grown up kid's choice of living. Sometimes they try and file law suits but as shown in the movie, it doesn't work.

Finally, thank you Subarna Thapa for making this movie, I think it is a very important milestone for Nepali movies.

Lesbian-themed movies are generally bad. This one is by far the WORST. Do not watch this film unless you want to be depressed, waste your time, and lose all your sex drive for the rest of the evening.

One of the main characters is hot. That's about all this film has going for it. The fact that it's the first Nepalese lesbian film isn't even a win for this film because it's possibly the WORST lesbian film in the world other than those that are actually homophobic.

Read on because you DO want this film to be spoiled. In fact, this film should come with a warning sign that it has an ending defined by gratuitous violence. When the hot lesbian gets murdered by her brother at the end, the entire audience was like, "WTF?" And then the 5 minutes of her partner walking being depressed and oppressed till the movie ends are equally pointless and "WTF?" Because after that WTF moment, you're just hoping that the film will redeem itself somehow, but it doesn't in the slightest.

Oh, and it has horrible cinematography, but that's nothing in comparison to the horrible ending this film has.

They wouldn't even show the two characters kiss, yet they show one being murdered and lying in an autopsy room?!?!?! Gratuitous violence is better than gratuitous sex, according to society! Eww. Like we needed a crappy film to tell us that straight people are murdering us! That life as a lesbian is hopeless? Is this supposed to be uplifting? Empowering? Enlightening? Life changing? Oh, no. The film barely even conveyed a sense of sadness and gravity about what just happened... it was just horribly done all-around. No redeeming qualities at all.

Boys Don't Cry showed the murder. That was bad enough. But at least Boy's Don't Cry was redeemed a little (debatably) by the fact that it followed an actual story exactly and didn't just come out of the blue and look totally gratuitous... was handled better. Brokeback Mountain also ended horribly, but at least they didn't show the murder, they showed the love and conveyed the deep need these characters had for each other... it was a beautiful movie. The problem is that these are the only depictions the mainstream deems worthy of film, the only films that get funded, and that pisses me off. But Soongava is the worst kind of film. It is a total mood killer and not even a beautiful film. I went with my trans lover, and I had to cradle him for the next few hours... and if I hadn't had someone to be angry at this film with me, I'd have felt more depressed than I did.

What will you get out of seeing Soongava? Um, if you are straight, maybe you will feel a little pity. MAYBE you will feel an idiotic sense that you are making the world a better place by watching a film that causes you to pity lesbians in Nepal. That's about the best you can hope to get out of this film. At worst, you will be depressed and angry. Or, if you're a homophobe, you'll feel self-righteous that you saw a lesbian get murdered. Congratulations.

Don't watch this film.