It had to happen someday; for a US-Sri Lankan indie, rom-com movie to feature the most famous Sri Lankan herbal drink, Samahan. This tea is very popular in India as it helps build immunity and fight cough and cold. In Ben and Suzanne’s Reunion in 4 Parts, writer-director Shaun Seneviratne mentions Samahan several times which makes me feel at home. The film briefly touches upon the idea of never being fully inside or belonging in an alien culture.
Sathya Sridharan plays the role of Ben Santhanaraj, an Indian American high school teacher who goes on a journey from America to Sri Lanka with his partner Suzanne Hopper (Anastasia Olowin). They have been apart for quite some time and he wants to spend some quality time with her. The plan is to travel across the country on a road trip while trying to reignite their long distance relationship which has lost its spark over time. But things don’t start well from the beginning. Suzanne works for an NGO called Economic Integrity that deals with microcredit loans; she is out of town on business when Ben arrives and can’t pick him up from the airport so her senior citizen boss Priyanti does it instead. Even when they eventually get back together later for their road trip, they end up turning it into work from home routine that almost breaks them further apart because now everything between them revolves around work only leaving no room for personal life or anything else. She accuses him of being selfish by making her feel unnecessarily guilty about prioritizing job over their relationship while he feels like she has always done this throughout their history together.
The Before Trilogy by Richard Linklater comes to mind when watching this film because just like those movies which were structured around conversations between two people who meet randomly one day then fall in love as they talk more about themselves ; here we also have our main characters talking about different things throughout their journey together. The conversations are both spontaneous and candid, giving us more insights into who they really are besides what we see on surface.
However, the film’s indie feel is even more indie than Linklater’s work. You can tell from looking at it that this movie was made with a very low budget; everything looks cheaply done which adds to its authentic feel somehow. They don’t have any big name actors playing these roles like Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. But Sathya Sridharan as Ben and Anastasia Olowin as Suzanne manage to be likable enough for us because of how normal they seem in their behavior towards each other there’s no over acting here or anything outlandish happening between them. Their exchanges too are just average everyday talk between two people who have been together for some time already but not all romanticized words spoken by lovers should sound poetic sometimes love is raw rather than dreamy or whimsical. This makes their relationship dynamics appear real and natural unlike those seen in most Hollywood movies which tend to sanitize such matters.
Ironically enough though, back in America Ben and Suzanne have a cat named Ernest Lubitsch after the famous filmmaker known for his elegant comedies like “To Be Or Not To Be” & “The Shop Around The Corner”.
Everything is seen in light of the recent recession. Suzanne, who used to support female entrepreneurship, has now become a debt collector and loan recovery agent. No wonder she cannot see anything else but a bleak life. It takes a movie Starship Troopers for them to come close to each other again although they may watch it differently. It helps them negotiate another bend in their relationship and lets them know that at the very back lies a fresh start.
For being a talk oriented film, I only took one phrase from it. We all know what pent-up anger is like. However, I’m going to copyright this expression for Ben: pent up tendernesses.
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