The Taste of Mango is an impressionistic collage of female abuse through three generations bound by enduring love.
Juicy Fruit
by Alexa DalbyThe Taste of Mango
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
When watching this film, it’s hard not to think of Philip Larkin’s poem This Be The Verse and its most unforgettable opening line. That line could also relate to grandmothers in this sensitive documentary by Sri Lankan British filmmaker Chloe Abrahams, shot with her mother and grandmother over several years, in locations ranging from lush Sri Lankan beachside veranda to rainy grey British inner city.
Snippets of home movies are interspersed with impressionistic segments of rivers running and stylised faces. What connects these three women, and gradually emerges as Abrahams lovingly unpicks it in conversations that break the cycle, is an unspoken history of abuse repeated through the generations, an acceptance passed on from woman to woman in the womb like its metaphor of eating luscious mangoes while pregnant (setting a dreamlike tone from the start).
The Taste of Mango and its director have won loads of festival awards, including the 2023 BIFA award for Best Debut Director – Feature Documentary. It may be slight in length but it packs a powerful punch for freedom for women worldwide. It says things may be slowly changing.
The Taste of Mango screened at the London Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award; Abrahams was chair of the Short Films jury; and is released on 29 November 2024 in the UK. Picturehouse hosts a screening and Q&A with the director on 27 November 2024 (Reclaim the Frame).
