Acts of kindness are few and far between in the harsh textile factory of Myanmar, where young San Kyi (Nandar Myat Aung) ekes out a meager living, hunched over a sewing machine. When new employee Theint (Nandar Myint Lwin) tells a white lie to cover it up after an unauthorized bathroom break, San Kyi’s face beams with gratitude, while Teint simply winks at her in response. In this simple moment of solidarity between strangers a close friendship is founded. But in Aung Phyoe’s tremulous, allusive drama “Fruit Gathering,” the possibility of something more grates on women’s insecurities and social boundaries, while an unspoken undercurrent of weirdness permeates the proceedings long before a single, ill-advised kiss forces the characters to address it.

Since dispatches from Myanmar – where same-sex sexual activity remains illegal – remain a rarity on the global film scene, the vivid and unusual details of its setting distinguish “Fruit Gathering” from other comparable cinematic stories about gay repression and self-realization. In many ways, it’s a touchingly dated work: if the film seems cautious or hesitant in some ways, it’s a stark reminder of the battles over queer visibility that still continue in many parts of the world. Co-produced with France and the Czech Republic, Phyoe’s first feature film (following a series of well-received shorts, including the one presented in the 2019 Locarno competition, “Cobalt Blue”) premiered at Karlovy Vary in the main competition and should enjoy extensive festival travel, particularly in LGBTQ-specific showcases.

Aung is an effectively fragile and soft-spoken presence as San Kyi, a young woman who has grown accustomed to making herself invisible. Bullied at work by her supervisors and at home by her critical, domineering mother (Thida Soe Khant), she has been taught to want little in life except a basic life, which is provided by the factory, on the industrial fringes of Myanmar’s Yangon commercial hub. He silently longs to return to his hometown in the north, frequently dreaming (in stylized sequences filmed to evoke early Technicolor proceedings) of simpler times there and of mangoes hanging abundantly from the trees. However, his rigid and unsentimental mother only sees in his future urban work and an arranged and profitable marriage.

In the more rebellious and free-spirited Theint, San Kyi sees not just a glimpse of who she could be, but who she could be with, and the two women form a quick and firm bond: at one point, when they escape together for a riverside excursion, Theint takes a photo of their shadows together in rippling water, and the snap lingers as a symbol of their suddenly and intensely merged identities. But as much as San Kyi idealizes the other woman, Theint is an erratic and flawed figure, quick to borrow money from her new friend and slow to pay it back; After a brief, unexplained disappearance, she returns with a new husband, much to San Kyi’s confusion and dismay. It is at this point that the romantic nature of San Kyi’s feelings for Theint is finally confirmed; However, whether they are reciprocal remains a painful point of ambiguity.

“Fruit Gathering” is at its most witty and moving when it interrogates the terms of this relationship through silent, pregnant glances and gestures, filmed with dreamlike stillness under a summery light by DP Thaiddhi, unaccompanied by any score: an image of a woman looking curiously at herself in the mirror where the other brushes her hair; the subtly increasing pastel color scheme of Akari Diraki’s beautifully tailored suits; the seemingly platonic but internally charged meaning of holding hands in a public place. Any further eroticism is largely kept off-screen, but those scenes are packed with sensual possibilities.

We find ourselves in a less safe position when the tension between the women turns into a confrontational melodrama, complete with heated, rushed outbursts and physical violence. While the urgent desperation of Aung’s speech here rings true (like a woman having to express her feelings for the first time, never to be heard or acknowledged), the sharp new turns of Phyoe’s writing do not, though the film stabilizes for a moving coda that returns to its favorite mode of unspoken, bittersweet longing, shaped and constrained by stark socioeconomic reality. The stakes are constantly and palpably high in a story about love that is forbidden in the most literal and systemic sense, and is felt in brief, ecstatic moments of release.