AYU – A Review

We next see Ayu when Nishmi is doing her ward round in hospital, and she/we observe an empty bed with a bed sheet carelessly left behind.

- BY SUSIRITH MENDIS ([e-mail])

In clinical experience, when we see an empty bed, the first thought that rushes to our minds is death. A patient has died and has been removed to the mortuary. Only thereafter, on inquiry might we be told that the patient has been taken for investigations or else, just gone to the toilet. But death hangs there in that image until we find the occupant of that bed, Ayu, sitting by herself in an adjacent room. Does Ayu depict Nishmi's loneliness feeling alone, uncared for and as bewildered as a child whose grandmother has not come to see her?

This is one of the most enigmatic of Sinhala films that I have seen. I T had to see it twice to understand the rationale of the non-linear narrative and the developing plot. It moves on at least two planes - one, the straight-forward storyline and the other, the surreal presence of Ayu, the little girl who titles the film.

First for the story. A young doctor, Nishmi, is caught up in a dissatisfying marriage with a tour operator who is hardly at home. She is uneasy about his regular absences from home and disturbed about the foreign feminine voices she hears in the background whenever she phones him and his postponements about when he is coming home. She is not at all close to her widowed mother who seems to visit her often. The mother, caring as most mothers are, steeped in Buddhist cultural traditions, is nevertheless an annoying presence in the apartment. Her Buddhist piousness seems to annoy Nishmi. As the story develops, we come to realise that the mother is worried about Nishmi and wants her to attend a Bodhi Pooja she has arranged. It was somewhat later that we became aware of Nishmi's serious illness and the appeal to the spiritual by the mother is because Nishmi is afflicted with HIV.