I Am

Directed by Sonali Gulati. 2011.  70 minutes. In Hindi and English with English subtitles.

Study areas: Family Relationships, Coming Out, Homosexuality, LGBT, Human Rights

After the passing of her mother, filmmaker Sonali Gulati leaves her girlfriend in the US to travel back to India, a country that only recently abandoned the law that criminalized homosexuality. She returns to empty out the home where she and her mom once lived together for twenty-one years.

The title I Am is both unfinished and complete. Invisible ellipses stand in for Sonali’s unspoken words, the missing object at the end. In the meantime, the title is a complete sentence, a matter-of-fact statement about identity, needing no modifiers.

Her mom used to ask her, “Do you have girlfriends?” Sonali always postponed answering, because, “We all live our lives as if we have plenty of time.” She will never know the rest of the conversation.
         
What would have been – how her mom would have reacted to her coming out – is the question Sonali seeks to answer in this documentary. She explores the question privately, through a diary-like voiceover tinted with regret, tracing anecdotes about their close, imperfect relationship in old photographs. She explores the question vicariously through her interviews asking twenty-one other people to reveal their very real experiences of coming out to their families. The myriad ways these families react are the subject of this movie.

Not everyone has the privilege to come out openly, though. When Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil came out publicly in 2006, he risked being disowned, being disinherited, and being assassinated by his own warrior family. The price for eloping, paid for by a same-sex pair of young lovers, is waking up at knifepoint – one girl’s family threatens their forever separation – or death. After coming out exuberantly at a pride parade, one woman receives a phone call from her estranged mother simply saying, “You have shamed us.”
         
But support also comes strong. Some families are loud. An outspoken single mom, allied by her sisters, marches in a pride parade with her gay son. Another mom fondly recalls how she and her husband welcomed their son’s foreign partner in their small flat and threw them a cozy wedding.

The quieter families are no less supportive. To their children’s ears, an understanding “I know,” or an understated “That’s fine,” bring just as much solace and relief. A perceptive and thoughtful mother forecasts how other attendees at an upcoming wedding might react to her teenage daughter’s gender-defying attire and teaches her how to navigate through subtle social quandaries. These parents acknowledge society’s ever-looming oppression, feel their children’s loneliness, and take it upon themselves to continually provide a secure home base for their children.
         
The most remarkable feat of this documentary is how it captures the less often told yet no less powerful story: the vulnerable experiences of people on the receiving end of confessions, the candid narratives of families who have been “came out to.” Sonali’s interviews uncover their strength and honesty. They convey their shock and their difficulties accepting; they admit to having their dreams of heteronormative comforts broken; they look forward to new dreams being born. A considerate mother hides her own doubts and fears as she waits for her adolescent daughter to overcome internal homophobia. A man, having foreseen that his family would be at a loss of what to do, comes out with considerable gentleness, holding his mom’s hand as they take a walk together, caring about how they would feel had more value to him than whether they would accept him.
         
One possible shortcoming of the documentary is how it handled questionable or false statements. A dad, like a doctor lecturing about a rare disease, says definitively that there is one-percent chance for a child to “turn out homosexual.” Multiple interviewees confuse romantic/sexual orientation with gender identity. In fact, Sonali herself maybe conflates the two related but distinct constructs when she follows her voiceovers, “I’m just not interested in men” and “I’m in love … with a woman,” by standing before a mirror, exposing her butch look for the first time. It remains ambiguous whether these moments reflect ignorance, and they may mislead viewers with limited knowledge about queer identities and perpetuate hurtful myths and stereotypes. It is also possible that these moments reflect a directorial choice, in keeping with the movie’s strolling pace and realist style, to refrain from pausing to correct or argue.

Ultimately, coming out to one’s family is more than just revealing or confirming a piece of information. It is sharing with people important to us something deeply personal. It is laying ourselves bare, and hoping for an affirmation that our love is valid, for an assurance that the foundation of our connection is as unshakable as before, and for a renewed relationship that will be more honest, more open, than ever.

“We would not have been alone in this experience,” Sonali says to herself. Through this moving autobiographical documentary, Sonali Gulati transforms her lonely contemplation about her mother into a catalyst that draws together a warm community of courageous families who are rich with stories of both painful reflection and joyous celebration.

Those stories should find a place in a classroom, but – as much as I hate to say it – I am unsure where they would fit. The segments on Prince Manvendra’s public coming out and on Section 377 (the anti-gay law) would be the most appropriate to use in the classroom, but the most compelling stories (Balli’s and Sonali’s) would be more difficult to find room for. I could, however, see this being shown at a meeting for a school’s LGBT group to give perspective on the difficulties of coming out. 

 
Alice Huang is a PhD student in clinical/community psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She studies individuals’ attitudes and beliefs about emotionally vulnerable parts of themselves, and how such attitudes and beliefs relate to emotional wellbeing and close relationships.

For more information on I Am, please visit their website.

Last Updated: March 10, 2016