Lipika Singh Darai’s “B and S” (2025) is hard to put into words or to be articulate about. That isn’t a criticism but a mere observation. The film is characteristically fluid with its structure and approach. However, the same untranslatable aspects make it moody and affecting. The 30-minute-long film appears as a collection of fleeting moments in the lives of its characters along with their hopes and dreams. Some of them are for the future and the others for the future that the characters once dreamt of. Together, it all feels like their memories conjured up as a fusion of everything that can be put into words or images.
These experiences, whether anecdotal or imagined, mesh with each other flexibly – since cinema can offer that fluidity. The film centers around two lives. B and S are their initials. They reveal their struggles with identity and self-expression that have been central to their relationships with themselves and others. Their personal insights lead us to understand a trans person’s lived experience. These insights reveal their sense of detachment and the burdens of rejection and how these factors impact their physical and emotional relationships with themselves.
The film sheds light on the impact of these negative emotions leading them to live in a shell, vulnerable for an honest expression. It briefly expresses the importance of accepting oneself. Knowing that someone else is leading a life we wish to lead can be liberating. The film highlights the same sense of liberation, not through grand gestures but through its microscopic effects. This sense of freedom is explored through an intimate perspective. Still, a lot of its aspects are inherently political. They depict the effects of things not necessarily in their control.
Despite revolving around the challenges in their lives, the film feels warm and gentle as it explores the joy of co-existence and the importance of a healthy, accepting support system. The characters lend each other hands in challenging situations and form bonds, unconventional to the immediate world around them. Whether resulting from a desire or the lack of an alternative, the effect of co-existence is evident. It seeps through the film’s impressionistic frames that merge the bits of their visions and lived experiences, as mentioned above. They often come across as a collage, at least to a novice like me to this kind of cinema.
The frames offer a sense of their psychological landscapes without directly communicating anything specific by themselves. The sound design offers a spatial window into their emotions while the voice-over narration allows the characters to take center stage. Unlike “Emilia Perez” which tries to make a statement from their half-baked understanding of a trans person’s experience, “B and S” is a grounded moodscape that gives the characters the mic to speak for themselves. It is sentimental but not preachy, and never exploits their pain and gender euphoria as Audiard’s film does.
The experiences the characters share in “B and S” are vivid, and filled with details, both direct and subtextual. They briefly reminded me of James Sweeney’s “Straight Up,” which explores the distinction between romantic and sexual desires and their relevance or irrelevance to their gender identity. “B and S” highlights the very distinction. It also shows the lack of knowledge from the said experts who are supposed arbiters of such topics. These insights appear through the imaginary conversations that a character has with their grand aunt, who once took on responsibility for someone else’s future and offered unconditional co-dependence.
![The Funeral [1984] Review – Wickedly Satirical and Rapturously Inventive Dramedy](https://www.highonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Funeral-1984-768x578.jpg)
