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by E. M. G. Edirisinghe

The woman of the East is one in between the woman in the Middle-East and the West. One covers herself from head to foot leaving only the eyes uncovered, and the other reveals herself from head to foot except the groins. The shoe that covers most of the foot is man's best shoe while the shoe that reveals the most of the foot is woman's best shoe; it leads to temptation. "Woman's ankle is sin", the Talibans said. Asoka Handagama's 'Thani Thatuwen Piyambanna' (Flying With One Wing) is a cinematic attempt to capture the contradictions in which the Sri Lankan woman is caught in between the two cultures of 'liberation' and 'hibernation'.

Displaying exceptional courage and imagination to explore the social and sexual reality dormant as well as manifest in our society, Handagama comes out with a stunning search for man's inner confusion and contradictions to wake up the sleepy lacklustre Sinhala filmgoer.

In Kabul, the story goes that birds fly with one wing with the other used to cover the posterior from with prowling eyes of the men below. It is just that Manju (Anoma Jinadari) the woman in forged male identity, does to keep herself away from homosexuals and heterosexuals. She covered her biological identity with male clothes while both her sexual and social emotions were kept still alive.

Landmark Sinhala film 'Rekhawa' (1956) was a reflection of what the village was in the early fifties. It was an attempt to recapture the essence of rural life then. Similarly, revolutionary and outspoken thesis of Handagama mirrors the complex emotional and sexual issues the young grappling to come into grip with eroding accepted social norms as preserved in the late nineties.

The film examines our own soul and interprets it back to the very people who are required to question their own conscience. It is a tale of woes and warps that worry and vary the sexual life of the individual. Self-deception of man is bared in the full glow of public eye. Filmmaker Handagama is always in search of radical themes arising from the web of complex social life of man which is in constant rapid change.

Manju though biologically a woman, is romantically and emotionally a man. Intellectually, however, she was nowhere. Her desire to disguise herself as a male is in satisfaction of her obsession with the childhood fancy to enjoy the dominant positive role of man in society as well as in family. Social, sexual, spiritual and physical height of man is overwhelmingly heavy which the human being in woman loves to possess and relish.

To feel herself as a man and to act as a man, the society must identify and recognise her physically as a man. Hence her change into male attire, make-up and manners. Thus the female within her disappeared with the external male appearance she projected.

The little girl living next-door is symbolic of the aberrations within the female soul right from her childhood. With the beard and moustache, the two prominent features of man; painted on her face posed herself as a man; but the immediate focus on her thighs shows that she remains a girl despite her disguise and mental transformation. What was deposited in her sub-conscious mind surfaced in full force on her attaining adulthood later.

To make her male identity acceptable and authentic, Manju talks, acts, smokes, runs, fights and walks like a man in order to project a masculine figure. Her male role is complete with her formal marriage to a biological woman Kusum (Gayani Liyanarachchi) with whom she lives as husband and wife. Kusum enjoyed being subjected to herself to the will and pleasure of her 'husband' who in his transgender status was the ideal man who lived in the image of a man whom she conceived and nursed within her imagination.

But, she did not enjoy Manju's transsexuality. She had not taste for Manju's lesbian sexual advances, as seen in the window curtain scene. In fact Kusum's desire for real exciting sex lied in men. Watching the young men at play she derived immense vicarious sexual satisfaction. She was desirous of sex with a biological male.

Unconventional sexual relations exist hidden and on the social fringe for fear of social abasement and isolation. Manju's forged appearance as a male is perfect as we notice the motor mechanic (Mahendra Perera) a homosexual making advances to Manju. It on the other hand, revealed the inconsistencies within which she had to live.

What made her to dress and cover herself as a man? Her desire is not lesbianism alone. There is more to it. She had an inherent urge to be a male so that she could play the dominant role in society. Her 'marriage' to a woman necessarily established her masculinity and social acceptability. In her transsexual conduct, she was a real bully on par with any other man. She enjoyed the new gender status sexually, socially and emotionally.

Once her true biological identity was uncovered, the society discovered who she was. Then it showered scorn on her. Social contempt attached to lesbianism springs from our cultural background where woman is held with honour and esteem in the family as well as in the society. To be a lesbian for a woman is to deny herself the status of motherhood which is raised to divinity. Stripped of that status, woman is almost a non-entity in the family or the society.

Doctor (W. Jayasiri) to whom Manju was accidentally taken was living on illegal abortions. To his surprise he found her virginity alluring. Infatuated by her 'clean' sexuality, he who had seen only the pregnant women, he was greedily after her. Manju killed him for uncovering and disclosing her biological identity which finally sealed the quest for securing and living in 'superior' masculine personality. With her sole ambition dashed she was left no hope of living. Her final appearance in the nude marks the culmination of her gradual decline and final disintegration of her emotional identity and the hidden biological identity which she could not hide and forget in her quest for ambitious pursuits.

This process commenced with the doctor discovering her identity. Her fellow mechanics found her to be too 'shy' to be among men. The excitement the male nudity caused in her when she was in the male bath-room was unbearable. Personally she sank to the bottom when her mechanic friend challenged her to piss the way he did it. When she was finally stripped naked, she was reduced to the woman she was born. She had nothing to gain, lose or hide but to revert back to the customary role of woman where she is the exalted woman and not the humiliated man. Defeated and dejected she implored for mercy, at least that is how she appeared.

Structurally the whole film is woven into a web of perverted sexual activity of man. It involves multiple responses and imperatives of sexually motivated man.

The last scene where Manju appears in the nude seems to be anti-climactic as the climax had already been reached with her naked back in full view of the neighbours whose eyes were fixed on her face, but not on her nudity which when deliberately exposed is of no effect. To know who she is more important. Sound of water dripping down constantly, demonstrates Manju's emotional build-up being shattered in the bathroom where male biological identity was quite explicit. Bathroom is essentially a place where the gender difference was maintained and the two sexes are necessarily segregated.

She was compelled to share toilets with men, an experience a chill would have been sent down her spine plunging her into severe mental and physical strain.

The film is more episodic than a flowing story. The scenes are in harmonious blend realised through sharp editing. It yields a neat effect of a mentally aggressive presentation. It could have been followed even if it was silent, so much is the superb use of the language. Most of the shots are long or at high angle which distances the audience from the screen. The viewers are to arrest the film objectively within, without being influenced by social, sexual and cultural inhibitions.

Handagama has taken the Sinhala cinema on a course hither to unexplored. It questions the traditional values that exalt the woman and the practices that put her in a subsidiary role. Handagama has broken through all social and cultural barriers to express himself cinematically and without restraint. Manju obsessed with childhood fantasy of transsexuality, 'covered' herself with male clothes, the doctor 'uncovered' her female identity, and finally she herself was forced to 'discover' her true identity that was nothing more than a woman like any other woman. What her future would be more interesting than what her past was.

Woman's liberation is within herself and not in the imitation of man. Circumstances have made the woman physically different from man. But spiritually she can achieve what man can achieve. There lies the true equality of man and woman.

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