With the mixed use of language and the film’s use of space, Funny Boy conveys an idea of people who are straddling different experiences and different worlds. You don't go to a butcher in Sri Lanka and speak in English.
If I'm a Canadian citizen and I'm the director, and the writer is a Canadian citizen, then why can't the film be in the language that it's supposed to be in? The book is in English, but I felt it would be more authentic if people didn’t speak English all the time. They’ve changed, thank God-they're far more open now. That was 15 years ago and you could not get funding if the film was not shot in either an Indigenous language, English, or French, which are the rules of Telefilm Canada. For Water, you had to shoot versions of the film in both Hindi and English to secure financing, so was the language for Funny Boy a logistical or creative choice? What inspired the varied use of language in the film? Funny Boy is a mix of English, Tamil, and Sinhalese. That’s what Arjie is doing all the time." "Even at my age, I constantly have to navigate the preconceptions that are attached to me being an Indo-Canadian. When an elder Arjie, played by Brandon Ingram (no, not that Brandon Ingram), begins a sweet, hesitant relationship with Shehan (Rehan Mudannayake), a Sinhalese boy at school, Radha Aunty’s courage and lost love are his inspiration to take the leap. Radha begins a forbidden relationship with a Sinhalese actor in the show and sees firsthand how violent clashes between cultures can transform one’s desire. It’s in this artistic space that Arjie sees how love knows no boundaries.
Radha Aunty paints his toenails (a “joyous secret” they share) and invites him to be part of her theatre group. Their story lets the young Arjie explore means of self-expression outside of the usual gender stereotypes. Key to Arjie’s growth is his relationship with his aunt, Radha, played by Canada’s Agam Darshi. Never one to shy away from controversy, Mehta’s film explores how oppression infiltrates marginalized classes as Arjie’s Tamil family struggles to embrace him, failing to recognize how they enforce the same prejudices of which they are targets. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the nation’s civil war, which erupted in the violent Black July siege in which the Sinhalese majority targeted the Tamil minority.
Funny Boy, which is Canada’s official selection in the Oscar race for best international feature film, is the story of Arjie, a young Tamil man coming of age and coming out of the closet in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. The daring Indian-Canadian director delivers one of her best and most beautiful films yet with this adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s acclaimed 1994 novel. Deepa Mehta took Canada to the Oscars in 2006 with Water and she could do it again with Funny Boy.
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