‘Peacock Lament’: Tokyo Review

Dir/scr: Sanjeewa Pushpakumara. Sri Lanka, Italy. 2022. 103mins

After the death of his mother, Amila (Akalanka Prabashwara) relocates his two brothers and two sisters from their village in rural East Sri Lanka to the capital of Colombo, where they set up camp in a half-built shell of a building. Struggling on a wage from a Chinese-owned construction site, Amila takes work with Malini (Sabeetha Perera), whose ‘Baby Farm’ business traffics the infants from unwanted pregnancies to wealthy foreigners. The fourth feature from Sanjeewa Pushpakumara is a wrenching autobiographical story of survival, and of emotional connections forged under duress. While not always the most slick and polished piece of filmmaking, it is a sobering portrait of life in Sri Lanka without a safety net.

A sobering portrait of life in Sri Lanka without a safety net

This is the second feature from Pushpakumara to premiere in Tokyo: his third film, Asu, also started its festival journey at the 2021 edition. (Previously, his debut, Flying Fish, premiered at Rotterdam and his second feature, Burning Birds, showed at Busan.) Peacock Lament’s autobiographical element – oldest child Pushpakumara worked as a labourer to support his family of 10 and, like Amila, he also had a sister who suffered from a congenital heart defect – may help to distinguish the film within the crowded arthouse cinema market. But it’s more likely that the film’s journey will largely remain within the festival circuit; its Tokyo award for Best Artistic Contribution should bolster the picture’s profile among programmers of further events.  

The film’s vivid sense of place ultimately tells us more about the world that Amila and his family inhabit than the dialogue, which tends to be expository and rather flatly delivered. The space that Amila has found to house his siblings is a case in point – a skeleton of a building, without external walls, which offers just enough shelter to make it preferable to life on the street. Unbeknownst to Amila, his younger brother and sister attempt to raise money by begging on the street. But this backfires, resulting in the youngsters getting hauled before the unsympathetic police and rehomed in an orphanage. 

At first, the job working for Malini seems ideal. It’s well paid and relatively easy. Amila’s duties include collecting young pregnant women in a converted biscuit truck and delivering them to the Baby Farm dormitories. There, according to the contract they have signed with Malini’s illegal organisation, they must relinquish their phones and give up their babies without question once they have been chosen by customers.

Sometimes, however, the girls have second thoughts, and Amila is required to track down runaways and return them; forcefully if necessary. His inclination is to empathise with these desperate young women and, once he strikes up a friendship with one of them, Nadee (Dinara Punchihewa), Amila finds the job increasingly at odds with his conscience. 

This connection between Nadee and Amila is persuasive and warm, particularly when compared to some of the rather stiff non-professional performances elsewhere, providing both an anchor for the picture’s disjointed structure and a much needed glimpse of optimism.