“Elephants in the Fog” seems like a film that was just waiting to be made when the Kinnar community in Nepal was way ahead of the times. Writer/director Abinash Bikram Shah makes an enthralling debut by finding a safe haven on the outer fringes of civilization where a religion built around the idea that the spiritual transcends the physical and that a third gender exists outside the binary of males and females, suddenly made unsafe when one of its most devoted members starts to wonder about a life outside of it.
There’s no question that Pirati (Puspa Thing Lama) has given herself over fully to the teachings of the Guru Mata (Umesha Pandey), the religious leader of the community that is started to think about a successor, only Pirati, the obvious choice, would be reticent to take the mantle when she has fallen in love with Ganga (Binita Gurung), the man that will take her to run errands in the city on his motorbike from the village, and besides the relationship being a no-no when Guru Mata preaches abstinence, she has started to imagine what the future could be like without all the responsibility she carries as a mother to all in the community. The most compelling reason to stay would be to continue to care for people like Apsara (Ali Ghimire), one of the young trans women that have come in search of acceptance usually after a difficult life elsewhere yet can remain somewhat restless given the religious strictures, but when Pirati hints that she might be leaving, it’s difficult to know when Apsara disappears, leaving behind a wig that seems like she’d never go anywhere without, if it’s a reaction to Pirati after a tense final exchange or if she might’ve been murdered.
While “Elephants in the Fog” may have the bones of a standard mystery as Pirati goes in search of Apsara not knowing whether she’s dead or alive, it is anything but because of its unique setting and cultural nuances. Pirati is already shown to suffer no fools as she tends to a flock as a mother superior that may be induced to act like nuns, but with queer sensibilities have a rebellious streak and cuss like sailors. However, she realizes to find Apsara, she can’t go it alone, risking potential upset of the delicate trust that’s been built up over generations in the area where Gurung Dai (Maotse Gurung), the elephant hunter charged with keeping the area safe from stampedes, is disgusted by the thought of letting police in to investigate after it takes considerable effort to even get them interested in the case and the neighboring community that has patronized the Kinnars for their purported healing abilities suddenly demonizes them when clues start to point towards someone among them being responsible for Apsara’s death even before a corpse can turn up.
Lama is magnetic as Pirati, trying to balance the various sensitivities at play in the region as Pirati while clearly wrestling internally with how much longer she put others ahead of her own desires. An eclectic Frederic Alvarez score drawing on the sounds of the forest that surrounds the Kinnar as well as the hand claps that they use to shoo away the elephants gives the film a hypnotic beat and the ability to point the camera in any direction to find something interesting in the sweaty jungle adds to the engrossing nature of the thriller (though to be sure it has become a specialty of cinematographer Noé Bach to visually harness the whirlwind of headstrong heroines, also seen in Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s “A Woman’s Life,” with a swirling energy that is quite impressive). “Elephants in the Fog” builds towards an unforgettable crescendo, but it’s memorable almost instantly from the moment it begins as it enters a world rarely seen on screen and somehow reveals even more intrigue going on inside the person at its center.
“Elephants in the Fog” does not yet have U.S. distribution.