An Unsteady Shape of Home: Adulthood at the Intersection of Class and Gender in the film Shape of Momo

By Shivani Khati

21 June 2026

A group portrait of intergenerational women. Photo : K.B.Gurung / TCC Photo Archive

Watching Shape of Momo felt like discovering a forgotten piece of clothing from your teenage years, stowed away in the back of your cupboard. That strange mix of disappointment and relief that growing out of things is not always a loss. The film grapples with the messiness of adulthood foregrounded by the tussle between wanting to conform to societal standards of success, while simultaneously resisting it with equal conviction. It masterfully explores this conflict through the intersecting pressures of gender and class unfolding like an incisive narrative of becoming, in the life of a woman in her early thirties.

Shape of momo poster

Even before the film begins, its poster shows an overhead shot of the protagonist curled up on a rock by the riverside, shaped like a momo. This delightful weaving of visual metaphor by collapsing landscape, a culturally symbolic food, and body into one sets the tone for the film. The film’s worldbuilding is immersive, one where music is restrained to emphasise the ambient sounds of nature thus creating a sensorial intimacy with the place. We experience a story that unapologetically focuses on the complex realities of women in Sikkim instead of focusing on the beautiful landscape to attract viewers.

 A common cinematic trope used in coming-of-age films is the return-to-roots narrative style which often essentialises the opposition between an alienated urban life and slow rural living. The movie has little interest in such strategic comforts and depicts homecoming as a jarring process without the guarantee of belongingness based on familiarity. Using extreme closeup shots we are denied any emotional distance, feeling everything with the primary protagonist Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung), who has left her content writing job in the city and returned to her village in the hope of starting a homestay business. Throughout the film she remains unsettled by an intricate knot of expectations thrust upon her, both as an insider and an outsider. She has to balance the gnawing weight of holding together a household without men while swallowing the frustration of never measuring up to the needs of the women in the family. Her imminent angst is most profound when she slips into a performative masculine role while negotiating with the patriarchal ordering. There is perhaps an irony in her name Bishnu, more commonly associated with men, to signify compensation for the absence of a son in the family. 

The central conflict of the film unfurls during the opening scenes when the four women surrounding Bishnu; mother (Pashupati Rai), grandmother (Bhanu Maya Rai), and sister (Shyama Shree Sherpa) are bickering playfully over using amiability as a survival tactic in society. Bishnu refuses to coddle anybody while the others believe in the necessity of compromise in preserving stability and soothing the sensibilities of the samaj. Caught between the cross-fire of gendered obligations, we find the  Bishnu at once charming and unlikeable, in a continuous battle structured by class and gender.

The clearest articulation of her class position becomes visible in her dealings with the family of migrant labourers from Nepal who work on her ancestral orange orchard. Under an informal tenancy arrangement long accepted by her mother, they pay rent in subsidised installments until the arrival of Bishnu who is persistent in extracting the full payment. She is unmoved by their pleas despite the revelation that their youngest child is gravely ill. It is only when she runs into the sick child at the hospital later that we see her go through guilt. A particularly riveting scene stands out where the eldest son of the tenant family declines the gift of fruits she brings to them. On her way back, the labourer’s son, resentful of Bishnu, stands atop a hill and releases the plastic bag of fruits she had brought for the family. He watches it tumble down one by one towards her. It is a quietly devastating moment where, for a moment, he stands in a position of power above her, elevated by a furious refusal to subordinate his dignity.

If the film is attentive to class, it is equally invested in exploring the generational struggles of all three women surrounding Bishnu. In parallel yet alternate iterations of navigating womanhood, we see a mother who has stretched herself thin to adapt to her husband’s world. A grandmother who seeks validation from her sons despite her daughter-in-law’s devotion towards her, and a sister burdened by the social pressure to bear a son while being perpetually agreeable. While the other women equate their self-worth with feminine duty, the camera follows Bishnu’s disconcerted gaze as she stands at the brink of making a choice that could shape her life. This accumulated unease spills into her romantic relationship with Gyan (Rahul Nawach Mukhia), the pleasant architect and MLA’s son adored by the women in Bishnu’s family. Even as Bishnu finds herself growing attached to him, we see her during scenes of silent reckoning fraught by the possibility of her selfhood being eclipsed. Love is an attractive bait but the cost of losing her voice is irreconcilable to her. Their ending may divide audiences but rather than offering a moral resolution the film leaves us with something gentler; the sight of an imperfect woman remaining articulate even in the face of fate.

The film resounds with melancholia throughout, although there are some visual motifs that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. Such as Bishnu’s solitary runs through the forest interrupted by glimpses of a woman in her neighborhood pacing endless circles on her terrace, representing self-imposed boundaries. From Bishnu’s shoulder, the camera seems to judge her but by the end of the film, we see an inversion. The terrace is empty and the woman is shown on the street, nervous but committed to movement. Overall, Tribeny Rai’s Shape of Momo felt like encountering a deeply familiar lore in an unexpected form, like drinking homemade tea poured into a new cup. Each of the characters are handled with care, space being made for their frustrations, contradictions, as well as fleeting moments of freedom. A profound depth is embedded in the film’s recurring joke about Bishnu’s inability to shape a momo perfectly. Surrounded by women accustomed to folding themselves into acceptable forms, she is an awkward misfit, unable or perhaps unwilling to succumb to what's expected of her. We experience 115 minutes of a beautifully unresolved world where everybody leaving the theatre can universally resonate with a story rooted in regional specificity.

Also read a review of the film by Pema Gyalchen Tamang here. MLA ko Chora in Shape of Momo: What a Likeable Man Reveals About Patriarchy

Shivani Khati is a doctoral researcher in Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Maharashtra. Her research interest lies at the intersection of urban sociology, political economy, and sociology of marketplaces with a focus on consumption and emerging forms of social change amidst urban transformation. Beyond her doctoral work her interests also extend to cinema, particularly the ways in which film form and visual storytelling illuminate social worlds.