Desire Without Confession: Queer Silence and Rural Intimacy in U for Usha

The Marathi short film U for Usha (2019) portrays the journey of an illiterate, single mother navigating her identity and desires within a deeply traditional rural society in Maharashtra. This study analyses how the film encodes rural queer intimacy through silence, gesture, and everyday spaces, and how audiences from varied socio-cultural backgrounds decode these meanings. Using an interpretative qualitative design, the research combines close reading of the film, a semi-structured interview with director Rohan Kanawade, and a focus-group discussion. Grounded in feminist film theory, queer ruralism, intersectionality, and Hall's encoding/decoding model, the analysis reveals that Kanawade's rural background shapes the film's narrative and aesthetic choices, while audience interpretations differ based on caste, gender, educational background, region, and media exposure. The study argues that U for Usha challenges urban-centric queer narratives in Indian cinema and highlights the importance of rural, intersectional experiences in understanding queer representation and spectatorship.