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REVIEW 347: KATTI BATTI

September 18, 2015, 8:27 am
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Release date:
September 18, 2015
Director:
Nikhil Advani
Cast:

Language:
Imran Khan, Kangna Ranaut, Vivan Bhathena
Hindi


Among the many ways one might react to Katti Batti, there are these two options:

(a) laugh till you cry at the sheer nothingness of it all; or

(b) be bored to tears.

I read a report this morning that Aamir Khan wept after he watched this film starring Kangna Ranaut and his nephew Imran Khan. Now I think I know why.

Katti Battiis director Nikhil Advani’s second fiasco in eight days. He helmed last week’s Hero, which feels National Award-worthy in comparison with this latest disaster. It’s hard to explain the story to you, since the script seems unsure of what it wants to be: a youthful romance about the challenges that the 21st century throws up or a romcom with a tragic twist or a love triangle or (in passing) a he-said-she-said-style relationship saga or all the above. I’m going with all the above = a boring mish-mash of too many things that add up to naught.

One of the film’s ambitions is painfully obvious: it wants to be considered cool. It has no philosophy or ideology via which to achieve that goal, so instead, when the leads – Payal Malhotra (Kangna) and Madhav Kabra a.k.a Maddy (Imran) – start living together, characters repeat the term “live-in relationship” more than once, in case we don’t get how ‘modern’ they are; someone reads 50 Shades of Grey to a woman on her deathbed; Maddy works for an architecture firm with funky illustrations on its bathroom walls; and the said firm is populated with sundry cardboard cut-outs for characters including a raucous south Indian boss called Ramalingam, an elderly Mrs D’silva who says “my child” as Bollywood Christians always do and a Punjabi client called Ahuja who is as loud as Bollywood Punjabis always are.

The biggest claim to coolth is laid when Maddy relates his dukhbhari kahani to his buddy Roger.

At one point, Roger cuts in to say: Chalo (come).

Maddy asks: Kahaan (where)?

Roger replies gravely: Ek aisi jagah jahaan sab tumhari baatein samjhenge (To a place where everyone will understand you).

Ooh.

Cut to a Sufi Music Festival at what seems like a heritage location. Deep. So very deep.


At the fest, Roger performs with his band which he calls (I need you to sit down and hold on to something while you read the next bit) FOSLA = Frustrated One-Sided Lovers Association. Not even an original, I’ve since learnt. But so cool, na?

About that hard-to-explain story… Middle-class, earnest Maddy and wealthy, bohemian Payal meet at architecture school. Pricey Payal watches in amusement as he makes an ass of himself over her before the entire college…because, you know, that’s what Hindi film heroines do. He wants love, she’s wants “timepass” – now there’s a cinematic gender role reversal that should have been explored, but it goes nowhere, lost in a surfeit of pretty frames and gimmicky editing. They fall in love, they shack up for five years, they break up, then he tries to get her back. The non-linear narrative resorts to multiple flashbacks that fail to camouflage the film’s emptiness.

Katti Battiis not merely superficial though. It comes across as being full of itself, clearly convinced that it is emotional, profound and often funny when in truth it is pretentious, pompous, manipulative, stretched beyond endurance and boring.

The trailer created an impression that this is a film about a girl and a boy with Kangna’s meatier, more interesting character stealing the show the way Kareena’s Geet did though she and Shahid Kapoor got equal screen time in Jab We Met. False. Katti Batti is about a boy. It is primarily devoted to Maddy’s effort to get back with Payal. She is missing from much of the action. And the story is told from his point of view, with Imran’s drab Maddy virtually monopolising the screen and Kangna’s Payal – the potentially more exciting character – a supporting player.


Having relegated this fine actress to the sidelines, Katti Batti then rubs chilli in our wounds by giving her more hairstyles than she has lines to speak. Imran is sincere and likeable, but he has his limitations and needs a good director to draw out the best of him. Unfortunately, Nikhil is no Abbas Tyrewala, but he does give us a silly airport chase scene which falls flat in comparison with the silly-yet-hilarious climax of Abbas’ Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Nathat launched Imran.

Even Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s pleasantly peppy songs Lip to lipand the cheekily titled Jaago Mohan pyaare (cheeky, since it shares its name with the devastatingly melancholy song featuring Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Jaagte Raho) are wasted here. The latter is played at screaming volume for some reason. Perhaps to distract us from the pointlessness of the proceedings?

Doesn’t work. You see, Katti Batti is an irredeemable, unsalvageable mess.

Rating (out of five): ½

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
140 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katti_Batti


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KAREENA KAPOOR PROFILE / PUBLISHED IN THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

September 21, 2015, 12:38 pm
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(This article by Anna MM Vetticad first appeared in The New Indian Express on September 25, 2011.)
KAREENA, QUEEN OF THE TIGHTROPE WALK

Good looks, charisma, perfect grooming, reasonable acting talent (or the willingness to work hard in that department), sex appeal, a flair for dancing, a mind-boggling wardrobe, the ability to look good in both Indian and Westernwear, a thick skin, PR skills... Phew! Long list, huh?! Well, if today’s most commercially successful Hindi film actresses were required to send out their curriculum vitae, these are the qualifications they’d be listing.
And then there’s that other characteristic that you’re unlikely to read in black and white on any heroine’s bio-data, although it’s essential in this male-dominated industry: popularity among the industry’s leading heroes.
At first glance Kareena Kapoor is not the ideal candidate for the job. She is known to speak her mind, she has antagonised several colleagues over the years with some of her utterances, and her personal life has resulted in several tricky equations in the industry that would have intimidated a lesser professional. But as Bollywood collectively rubs its eyes in disbelief at the collections continuing to pour in for Bodyguard, the year’s biggest hit so far, it’s clear that Kareena must be doing something right. After all she is, as of now, the most commercially successful Bollywood heroine of her generation, she has earned a fair share of critical acclaim, she’s the only one to act with every single top male hero of her time (more than once) and she’s a favoured colleague of all the three Mega Khans.
Since money talks more than anything else in the Hindi film industry, let’s first take a look at Kareena’s track record at the turnstiles. According to the trade website boxofficeindia.com, if a projected estimate for Bodyguard’s lifetime gross collections were to be made, then with a possible Rs 225 crore earnings, the film is likely to end up as Bollywood’s second highest grosser of all time worldwide, next only to the Aamir Khan-Kareena-Madhavan-Sharman Joshi-starrer 3 Idiots which notched up Rs 350 crore. There’s more. Take a look at the record holders for opening week net collections (after entertainment tax deductions) in India alone: Bodyguard(Rs 101 crore), Dabangg (Rs 81 crore), 3 Idiots (Rs 76 crore), Ready (Rs 69 crore), Golmaal 3 (Rs 62 crore), Ghajini, Raajneeti, Tees Maar Khan, Singham and Housefull. Kareena is the only heroine with three films on this list (her third is the ensemble cast comedy Golmaal 3).
Naysayers will point out that these blockbusters notwithstanding, Kareena has more flops in her filmography than her contemporary Katrina Kaif. There are film buffs and critics who believe that Kareena — unlike Priyanka Chopra and perhaps even Deepika Padukone — has been far less experimental in her choice of films, and especially in recent years has primarily stuck to masala-driven entertainers rather than roles that challenge her as an actress. This is particularly disappointing for those who were impressed with her decision to start her career with J.P. Dutta’s unglamorous Refugeeinstead of a frothy romance, and the early evidence of her desire to be different that came in the form of Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli. Says veteran film critic Rauf Ahmed: “Kareena is one of the most talented actresses of her generation but she knows on which side her bread is buttered. She’s very smart like SRK who is not at all a bad actor, as we have seen in films like Chak De, but is now playing to the gallery. Kareena realised early on that the Chamelis and performances will not give her the box-office success she wants. So she went about it smartly. She realised that the three Khans are the ones delivering hit after hit, so she kept them in good humour, and remained with them rather than experimenting outside, just the way Katrina stuck to Akshay Kumar for some time. And it worked well for her.”
Fans may deem this an unfair trivialisation of Kareena’s achievements, but those who’ve witnessed the male supremacy in Bollywood’s power structure will understand the constraints that even the most talented actress must contend with. And even Kareena’s harshest critics will concede that she has rarely, if ever, played a mere pretty appendage to a leading male star. Even in her most commercial outings, her character has been essential to the story and never that of a showpiece without substance. Says Malayalam-Tamil-Hindi filmmaker Siddique, director of Bodyguard: “There is no doubt that my film is centered on the hero, but at its heart it’s a love story and the heroine is extremely important because Salman Khan, no less, is playing her bodyguard. The girl’s role required a star who was also a performer, and that’s what Kareena is.” The actress herself believes that it’s no mean achievement to have a significant and substantial role in a Salman-starrer. “That hasn’t happened to any actress in the last five years!” she says in vintage Kareena fashion (see interview). And what about her role in Ra.One, the film that is better known as the next Shah Rukh Khan vehicle? Says Ra.OneDirector Anubhav Sinha: “I look at it like this — Ra.One is a father-son story, but can I tell you that story in three lines without naming Kareena’s character? The answer is no, that’s how important her role is.”
And that, in The Gospel According to Kareena Kapoor, is a happy place to be in. The actress’ forthcoming roster of films would be the envy of any female Hindi film star. After Ra.One with SRK, there’s director Reema Kagti’s untitled film with Aamir Khan and Rani Mukerji, Agent Vinod with boyfriend Saif Ali Khan, Karan Johar’s production Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu in which she co-stars with a hero nearer her age, Imran Khan, and of course Madhur Bhandarkar’s controversial film Heroine.
The commotion over Heroine mirrors the story of Kareena’s career. The part was first offered to her, but she declined it — due to lack of dates, say she and Bhandarkar; due to a disagreement over fees and the “bold content”, say the industry grapevine and sources close to Kareena. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was subsequently cast in the role but when Ash announced her pregnancy after shooting a part of the film, she was scissored out of the project and Kareena was persuaded to walk right back in. Wasn’t she concerned that she would be souring an already awkward relationship with her sister Karisma’s ex-fiance Abhishek and his powerful family? Those who ask, don’t know Kareena. “There are movies that I haven’t done that somebody else has done, how does that matter?” she asks. “We’re here to do our work, not to hold hands and sing in the park.” But the parting of ways between Aishwarya and the team of Heroine was very public and very unpleasant, so was Kareena not worried that her acceptance of the role would create further tension with the Bachchan clan? “Not at all,” she says emphatically. “They have their own life, and the Kapoors have the deepest and utmost regard and respect for the Bachchans and vice versa. Such a thing has not even crossed my mind.”
Still, it’s hard not to wonder about the difficult personal terrain that Kareena in particular — more than any of her female colleagues — has negotiated in her 11 years in the industry. Though Kareena and ex-boyfriend Shahid Kapoor have publicly said that they would have no problems working with each other, their break-up was clearly acrimonious if their last few public appearances together around the time of Jab We Met’s release are anything to go by. Not only did Kareena quit Hrithik Roshan’s debut film citing an insubstantial role, she is known to have been in a relationship with him in the early part of the last decade which reportedly ended bitterly on the sets of Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon. Ranbir Kapoor will certainly not be accepted as a hero with her since they are cousins (unless they play siblings in a film) so there’s one upper-crest hero ruled out for her for reasons beyond anyone’s control. She is widely known to have not got along with Bipasha Basu during the making of Ajnabee which led to some friction with Bipasha’s then boyfriend John Abraham. And then of course there is Abhishek.
Despite Kareena’s assertions about personal and professional lives being separate, the truth is that she’s not worked with Hrithik since Main Prem… in 2003, with Abhishek since his engagement to Karisma ended, or with Shahid since Jab We Met in 2007. But Komal Nahta, founder of the trade website koimoi.com, explains at length why Kareena survives and thrives despite these hurdles: “The male stars who are not on good terms with her are mostly not right on top of the rung. On top are the three Khans, Hrithik and probably Akshay. Abhishek is not in the reckoning for the top slot, and in any case she was not doing films with him since the Bachchans and Kapoors don’t get along, so nothing has changed because of Heroine. As for Hrithik, well, nothing is permanent in this industry and after all these years, if some project comes along I think both of them will be more than willing to work together. That leaves us with Ranbir who does just a couple of films a year. But considering that she has a great rapport with the three Khans, what does she need to worry about?”
What, indeed? Nahta elaborates further: “It would be unfair to say Kareena has cultivated the Khans — the Khans too need beautiful heroines who are good actresses and dancers, and have sex appeal. There aren’t too many girls who could match the three of them. There’s a shortage this side as well as that side, so it works both ways.”
And so, Bollywood’s most famously undiplomatic star is more complex than you can imagine. She may take potshots at John, but the Khans love her; she may question Priyanka’s accent on a talk show, but on film sets — which is where the professional in her kicks in — she is what director after director describes as “a hassle-free star”. Says Karan Johar who worked with her on Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham: “She’s not a diva on the sets. She gets ready easily, she is quick on the uptake, she’s a director’s dream and a production house’s delight.”
Besides, her refusal to mince words about some colleagues is part of the star persona that her fans find both charming and disarming; it provides constant fodder to the gossip press that keeps the public amused and the actress in the news. “There was a time when even I didn’t talk to Bebo (Kareena’s pet name) for a whole year, but that didn’t stop her from emerging as a movie star,” says Johar who now describes her as one of his closest friends in Bollywood. Adds another buddy, Rohit Shetty, Kareena’s director in Golmaal Returns and Golmaal 3: “She’s undiplomatic but she’s one of the most seedha bachchas (straight kids) in the industry. I’ve told her that though she thinks she’s very smart, she’s actually a bhondu(fool). She just goes with her heart, that’s why she gets into trouble.”

Adding to the Kareena package is the fact that she’s never been taken lightly as an actor. Though her roster of films now appears more mindlessly commercial than cerebral, she does have her very own calling card on the acting front: Jab We Met. After Refugee and Chameli, Jab We Met is the film that gave Kareena an opportunity to showcase her immense talent and screen presence. It also grossed Rs 50 crore at the box office worldwide (unprecedented in these times for a female-centric Hindi film), and marginally chipped away at the industry stereotype that heroine-oriented films don’t rake in big bucks. Now that her CV boasts of three back-to-back solid earners at the box office in Bodyguard, Golmaal 3 and 3 Idiots, she’s returning once again to a film which focuses on her: Heroine.
Today, Kareena is the Hindi film actress who can be your chammak challo or your Chameli, depending on where you are coming from; whose wolf-whistle-inducing screen presence takes nothing away from her acting chops; who fits well into haute swimwear and makes salwar kameezes look hot. She is also currently her industry’s highest paid heroine. Trade sources reveal that post-Bodyguard she commands Rs 5 crore per film, followed closely by Priyanka and Katrina who are in the Rs 4-5 crore category, Aishwarya who charges about Rs 3 crore for a film and relative newcomer Deepika who gets Rs 2-2.5 crore per project. Cousin Ranbir says he’s “a big fan” and that he’s “really really proud of what she’s achieved”. Siddique says he’d love to work with her again after Bodyguardbecause “she’s the kind of actress who grabs your attention on screen with her charm, her screen presence, her body language, her voice, her smile” and also because “it gives me as a creative person great satisfaction to work with an actress like her who contributes something to my vision of a character”. Madhur Bhandarkar calls her “a lethal combination of a glamorous woman and a talented actress” who “will be around for another 10 years”. And Kareena’s father Randhir Kapoor (whose long estrangement from her mother Babita, kept him away from Kareena throughout her childhood) can barely contain the pride in his voice as he adds: “These girls (Karisma and Kareena) have made a big success of themselves completely on their own steam, without my support, and I’m very proud of the fact that they’re bloody good at what they do.”
Kareena is undoubtedly in a commanding position in the industry, and her goal now is “to act in different kinds of films, strike a balance, do the small films, the big films, everything”. That’s good news for her dad who wants to see her “trying out more meaningful cinema, not rotten appalling films like Tashan which was one of the worst movies made in India. I’d really like to see her in more sensible films like Jab We Met.” His views are echoed by Kareena’s well-wisher and Chamelidirector Sudhir Mishra who urges her to do more roles that do justice to her talent. “She has the rare ability to surprise herself when she goes before the camera,” he says. “I’m not advocating that she do art films or boring films, just films that make her stretch herself. And if such offers don’t come often enough to Hindi film actresses, then they should become like the men, take the bull by the horns, construct films, produce films. Our female actors should be more political in a sense, take it as a challenge to encourage directors who want to make female-centered films instead of waiting for things to happen. I’m sure there are many stories around, many directors both male and female who are dying to work with Kareena.” Next step, Ms Kapoor?
(The writer is on Twitter as @annavetticad)
Original link:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/article366727.ece
Photographs courtesy:
(1)  Kareena Kapoor’s profile shot: Raindrop Media
(2)  Jab We Metposter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jab_We_Met
(3)  Chameli poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameli_(film)
Note: These photographs were not sourced from The New Indian Express

Related link: Kareena Kapoor interview
http://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/interviews/article366743.ece
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KAREENA KAPOOR INTERVIEW / PUBLISHED IN THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

September 21, 2015, 10:22 pm
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(This interview by Anna MM Vetticad first appeared in The New Indian Express on September 25, 2011.)
HEADLINE: “I can’t keep doing performance-oriented roles like Jab We Met”

HEADLINE: “Having something substantial in a Salman Khan film – that hasn’t happened to any actress in the last five years!”
Kareena Kapoor’s friends say that her famed lack of diplomacy has been tempered by her relationship with Saif. Fortunately her frankness remains intact, as Consulting Editor Anna M.M. Vetticad found during this interview:
How did you get involved in Bodyguard?
When Salman saw the original film, I think the first thing that he told his sister was, if we’re making this movie I want Kareena to play this character. When I watched the original Malayalam film I loved the girl’s role. Having something substantial in a Salman Khan film – that hasn’t happened to any actress in the last five years!
So it’s important to you that your role should be substantial?
Absolutely. Golmaal 3 had so many male characters but I was very sure that the female lead has to be the focus. After a decade in the industry, the most important thing for me is that I must have an equal role to the male in my movies.
Is it easy to find substantial roles as an actress?
Not when you constantly focus on the fact that you want performance-oriented roles. And I don’t mean to sound stand-offish or cocky but the fact is that you’re offered work on the basis of your talent, because ultimately you have to act, you know.
Have you interpreted your role differently from the way Nayantara did in the Malayalam Bodyguard?
The Malayalam film was made for the south Indian palate. We’ve tweaked it for northern audiences.
What is the difference between the southern and northern palate?
People here like to see action with a bit of the typical Salman comedy. All that has to be incorporated into a Salman film. The treatment of our films is different to what the south does. Though I feel some of the south Indian scripts are fantastic, they’re ahead of their times, especially Malayalam. They’re better than our Bollywood films.
You watch a lot of Malayalam cinema?
I don’t, but I’ve seen a few films of Priyan (Priyadarshan) and Siddique has told me about films he’s written. Their ideas are ahead, they’re forthright. It’s more interesting than what we guys come up with.
How was the response to the Hindi Bodyguardin southern India?
No Indian film has had the kind of collections that Bodyguard has had in south India.
No Indian film or no Hindi film?
I mean no Hindi film has got the collections that Bodyguard has got in certain places in south India.
Have you ever been offered roles in southern films?
Yes. But I have a thing that when I don’t understand the language, I don’t think I’ll be able to perform my character. So I’ve constantly stayed away from languages that I don’t understand.
The position of women in Bollywood was better in the black and white days than it has been since the 1970s. Are we returning to a phase when heroines will have more longevity than in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s?
I think so. It’s also on the basis of talent and how you look. Yes there is a longer innings for women of this generation for sure.
After a long time we’ve had someone like Aishwarya who did not slow down on her career post-marriage. Since the 1990s it’s been assumed that if an actress got married she’d slow down for 5/10 years, then maybe come back. Do you think Aishwarya’s career track has opened doors for younger heroines like you?
I completely come from this school of thought, the Meryl Streep school where your talent will take you places. If you can work for 25 years and still do Bridges of Madison County and The Devil Wears Prada, then why not? I hope our cinema will be like that some day.
Has your attitude towards marriage changed? I remember you once saying in an interview, “I won’t be one of those actresses who gets married and still continues acting” and “what’s the point of getting married if you do that?”
When I am married I want to give more time to family and to the person I love. I think I can manage. I mean I’m the only actress in the last decade who has balanced her professional and personal life. I’ve managed beautifully till now, touchwood. I am absolutely proud of the fact that I clearly do have a life apart from films. I sleep, breathe, eat films when I am on set, but I enjoy a life apart from this. My passion is films, but I am also passionate about love, so I balance both and I want to continue doing so forever.
You think you are the only actress of your generation who has managed to balance her personal and professional life?
Not everybody is open about a relationship. I don’t know of any actress who has ever said, I am going out and I do have a personal life, the way me and Saif are. For some strange reason nobody likes to be as public as we’ve been. For me love is a celebration and I would want everyone to know when I am in love because there is nothing wrong in it.
Salman is on a high right now, but Shah Rukh has not had a release for 19 months and in between he did a TV show that didn’t do well. Any concerns on that front?
These things keep changing from Friday to Friday. Somebody’s film will work on a particular Friday and somebody else’s will not, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they are superstars.
Why didn’t you accept Heroine when you were first approached for it?
I was busy.
Was it not because you couldn’t agree on the money?
I didn’t reach that stage. I was shooting five movies together, so it was impossible to do the movie at that point.
Did it have anything to do with disagreements over the script?
Not at all.
You were approached again after Aishwarya was dropped from it. She’s Abhishek’s wife and Amitabh Bachchan’s daughter-in-law. Since there’s a very small pool of talent in the industry, do actors need to worry about such things?
I said yes to the movie on the basis of the script. What happened is not my concern. I hope actors sign movies on the basis of their script – that’s what I do. There are movies that I haven’t done that somebody else has done, how does that matter? We’re here to do our work, not to hold hands and sing in the park.
But there’s a difference between Heroineand films that you have not done which others have accepted in the past. The parting of ways with Aishwarya was very public and unpleasant. Are you not worried that your acceptance of this role will affect your relationship with Aishwarya, Abhishek or Amitabh Bachchan?
I don’t see it in that light at all. It’s quite shocking that people would think that. They have their own life, and the Kapoors have the deepest and utmost regard and respect for the Bachchans and vice versa, so this is not something that has crossed my mind for a minute.
Is a film like Jab We Met more creatively satisfying than a Bodyguard?
Yeah, of course but we must balance every kind of film. It just so happened that Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir, Saif all happened to want me in their movies in one particular year. And I can’t keep doing performance-oriented roles like Jab We Met. I must balance the small films, the big films, do a mix of everything.
Is it infuriating that when films fare brilliantly at the box office, the industry and the country as a whole tend to credit the success primarily to the hero?
India and our industry in particular are male dominated, but with me there’s always been an exception. Bodyguard, for instance, will always be a Salman Khan-Kareena Kapoor film because the girl had such a strong character. It wasn’t just that I was showing up in the songs. I would never want to do that.
(Anna M.M. Vetticad is on Twitter as @annavetticad)

Original link: http://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/interviews/article366743.ece

Photograph courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/BBThisEid
Note: This photograph was not sourced from The New Indian Express
Related link: Kareena Kapoor profile
http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2015/09/kareena-kapoor-profile-published-in-new.html
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REVIEW 348: CALENDAR GIRLS

September 25, 2015, 5:17 am
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Release date:
September 25, 2015
Director:
Madhur Bhandarkar
Cast:


Language:
Akanksha Puri, Avani Modi, Kyra Dutt, Ruhi Singh, Satarupa Pyne, Madhur Bhandarkar
Hindi


It feels sad to write this review. Was this film really made by the man who gave us Chandni Bar, Page 3, Corporate and Fashion?

No doubt the concept of writer-director-producer Madhur Bhandarkar’s Calendar Girls is worth expanding into a full-fledged film. This, however, is not that film. This story has a been-there-seen-that feel to it – a whiff of Page 3, a dash of Corporate, a sprinkling of Fashion all chucked into poorly fleshed out scenarios. No new insights. No new perspective. And plain tacky.

If good writing is the cornerstone of a good film, then Calendar Girls is on the verge of collapse from its opening scene. The dialogues are of embarrassingly bad quality, most are heavy-handed, many mix Hindi with awkwardly handled English, and too many try too hard to sound clever.

The over-smartness is irritating. Such as when a photographer tells a bunch of models: Each of you must do something for me now that every model has to do for me the night before a shoot. Cut to the girls, all taken aback at what they assume – as we are no doubt expected to assume too – is a blatant request for sex. The music changes to reflect their fears. Grim silence follows, during which I could picture the writer visualising viewers thinking, “Oh, he wants to sleep with them.” At last the lensman speaks up, asking an offensive but different question. Dan ta tan!

Combine this mediocre writing with lousy casting and what you get is a non-starter, not a film.

Were Calendar Girls’ five female leads really picked by the man whose heroines so far have included Tabu, Konkona Sensharma, Priyanka Chopra and Bipasha Basu?

Here we get Akanksha Puri as aspiring model Nandita Menon from Hyderabad, Avani Modi as London-based Pakistani girl Nazneen Malik, Kyra Dutt in the role of Sharon Pinto from Goa, Ruhi Singh as Mayuri Chauhan from Rohtak and Satarupa Pyne as Paroma Ghosh from Kolkata. The five do not have as much charisma collectively as Tabu, Konkona, Priyanka or Bipasha possess in one little toe. Avani in particular cannot act and her personality is completely unsuited to the itsy-bitsy Westernwear that is the ladies’ wardrobe almost throughout the film.

Kyra and Satarupa hold out some hope. Kyra acts better than the others, but she either gained weight half way through the film or is poorly served by the clothes and camera – I can’t be sure which. Satarupa fits the glamour girl mould better than the rest, but needs to work on her acting. All five – especially Akanksha, Avani and Satarupa – suffer greatly from the combined assault of over-done make-up and poor lighting that highlights rather than camouflages their pancake.

The story is about five women from diverse backgrounds selected to feature in a high-profile, high-glam corporate calendar, clearly drawing on Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Calendar. This is their big break. The film is about the hurdles they face in tinseltown and how they get past them.

The point being made by Calendar Girls is this: that though films and modelling are life-suckingly challenging, you don’t necessarily have to sleep around to make it as is assumed by the public. Now if only this point was being made in a more polished, less exploitative film.

Madhur’s last two ventures – Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji and Heroine– were certainly problematic, but any objections to them are dwarfed by the aura given off by Calendar Girls that he had a low budget here and/or that he made this as a quickie while waiting for his next project to take off.

Nothing else can explain the all-pervading sloppiness of the film. Take for instance the titular calendar. The Kingfisher Calendar is an exclusive product that is gifted to a select few people, but the calendar in this film is shown hanging sadly at cheap eateries in Mumbai.

Elsewhere, at an agitation against Pakistanis, the protestors include men in skullcaps and women in burqas. Was a profound point about secularism being made here? If yes, it was lost on me.

A woman is told by her dad-in-law that her husband’s serial infidelity is a family “parampara”. She is heart-broken. Without any evidence given of a progression of feelings, we are later given a passing shot of the same woman, pregnant and being mollycoddled by that same husband. Had she accepted the “parampara?” Or had hubby turned over a new leaf? No idea.

Get get get Idea. Go go go go, get Idea. Aha ah ah, get Idea.

Don’t mind me. I got so sleepy revisiting this film for my review that I sang Idea Cellular’s ad jingle to wake myself up. Now seriously… Calendar Girls lacksattention to detail. For instance, TV anchors do not walk away from the camera the second they utter the last word on a show; they pause briefly to be sure they’re done. You wouldn’t learn that though if you were to take tips from a character in this film who is an anchor. Nitpicking, you say? No, demanding finesse.

Filmein toh bahut banti hai, par film wahi hota hai jo release hoti hai (many films get made but a film is truly a film only if it is released), says a character in Calendar Girls to a starlet.

Here’s a thought: Filmein toh bahut banti hai, par kuchh filmein aisi hai jo release nahin honi chahiye. After Calendar Girls, it will take a lot for Madhur Bhandarkar to redeem himself.

Rating (out of five): ½ (half a star)

CBFC Rating (India):

A
Running time:
132 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_Girls_(2015_film)


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FTII PRIVATISATION / COLUMN PUBLISHED ON BBC HINDI

September 29, 2015, 6:34 am
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(This is the English version of an article published on BBC Hindi on September 22, 2015)

DESTINATION: PRIVATISATION?

The Central government’s unrelenting propaganda against FTII’s striking students and the institution itself hints at a goal that goes beyond ending the current impasse

By Anna MM Vetticad

(Above) A still from this year's Bollywood hit Badlapur starring Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, directed by FTII alumnus Sriram Raghavan who is from the institute's 1987 batch; and (below) Malayalam film actor Vinay Forrt who passed out of FTII in 2009 

This week the Central Government is expected to begin “unconditional talks” aimed at ending the strike at Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). About time too. In the 100-plus days since protests began against the Centre’s appointments to the prestigious institution – including actor Gajendra Chauhan as FTII Society president – the sarkarhas run a blatant misinformation campaign against the striking students.

Apart from being embarrassed by the strike, the government’s antagonism could be attributed to the ruling BJP’s conviction that FTII is a bastion of Communists. The party insists that students would have objected irrespective of who this government had chosen. Facts indicate otherwise. When actor and BJP MP Vinod Khanna helmed the institute under the previous BJP-led government, students did not question his appointment. His acceptability came from his eminence in the field of cinema.

Interestingly, government propaganda is also being directed at FTII per se, with the repeated suggestion that it has not produced noteworthy alumni for many decades. Chauhan himself has been widely quoted as saying: “Barring Rajkumar Hirani, the institute has not produced any important artiste.”

In reality, FTII has churned out numerous luminaries. Hirani’s batchmate from 1987, Sriram Raghavan, directed this year’s Hindi hit Badlapurstarring Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. In theatres now is the Malayalam hit Premam with which actor Vinay Forrt, from the institute’s 2009 batch, has audiences rolling in the aisles laughing. 2014’s National and international award-winning Marathi film Killa is directed by Avinash Arun, who passed out in 2011, and written by fellow FTII-ian  Tushar Paranjpe. The list is endless.

While the government is right in pointing out that the institute is battling major systemic problems (a matter that students themselves have been raising for long), it is insidiously misleading the public about the track record of the institute’s alumni.

A possible motive for this propaganda has been emerging from mainstream and social media commentary by prominent pro-BJP voices. One columnist asked the party to “yank central funding” from FTII and “create a new institution manned by the right kind of academics and intellectuals… friendly to its way of thinking”.

Another alleged that annual government expenditure per student is Rs 13 lakh, four times the amount spent on a student at the Indian Institute of Technology. The figure has since been proved dubious by an RTI application filed by a student, the response to which shows that institute expenses unrelated to the students are being attributed to them (such as a film appreciation course for outsiders, a contest for film schools across India and a contribution to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund).

FTII’s Students’ Association alleged in a press release that during a dialogue on July 3, I&B Minister Arun Jaitley indicated that if they did not end their strike, they could face “shut down and eventual privatisation.” The Ministry has denied this, but film personalities present at the meeting back the students’ version.
Was privatisation on the agenda in June when Chauhan was annointed? After all, a respected artist is unlikely to be as pliable as a non-entity entirely beholden to his sarkari bosses for the post. Besides, most heavyweights might avoid supporting a proposal that has been decried by students and many in the film industry in the past.

The widespread support for the ongoing strike would make it hard for the Ministry to openly propose privatisation for a while now… unless of course it succeeds in convincing tax-payers that the striking students are a talentless, expensive burden on the exchequer and that investment in the future of Indian cinema is a waste of public money.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

Link to original column in Hindi:
http://www.bbc.com/hindi/india/2015/09/150921_govt_mulls_privatising_ftii_pm

Photographs courtesy: 
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badlapur_(film)
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinay_Forrt

Note: These photographs were not sourced from bbchindi.com

Related article by Anna MM Vetticad: “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” published in The Hindu Businessline
http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2015/08/pro-hindi-pro-bollywood-propaganda-film.html


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REVIEW 349: SINGH IS BLIING

October 2, 2015, 11:08 am
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Release date:
October 2, 2015
Director:
Prabhudheva
Cast:




Language:
Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Lara Dutta, Kay Kay Menon, Pradeep Rawat, Anil Mange, Arfi Lamba, Rati Agnihotri, Kunal Kapoor
Hindi


The wisest thing to do when you make a film this silly is to flaunt your silliness with pride and not pretend to be anything else. Singh Is Bliing does precisely that.

And so, though it has the IQ of a boiled potato and a plot thinner than the slim heroine, the film gets by on the combined strength of its unabashedness, Akshay Kumar’s charisma and complete surrender to the madness of the plot, a supporting cast featuring excellent comedians – in particular Ms Lara Dutta – and situations that are funny, even if often cliched.

At the centre of it all is Raftaar Singh, an ironic choice of name since he is intellectually slow. Raftaar (Akshay) is a well-meaning buffoon in Punjab’s Bassi Pathanan village. He is spoilt by his mother (Rati Agnihotri) and constantly chided by his father for his inability to ever complete a given task. Desperate to reform him, Dad packs him off to Goa to work with an old friend.

A continent away in Romania, the villain Mark (a nicely evil Kay Kay Menon) misbehaves with Sara (Amy Jackson), daughter of a fellow arms dealer (Kunal Kapoor, yes Shashi Kapoor’s son – brief role, neat performance). Sara snubs Mark. She goes into hiding to save herself from the vengeful fellow, taking off for Goa where she hopes to also locate her estranged mother.

All this has been engineered to get Akshay and Amy into the same frame so they can sing, dance and fall in love. Along the way they encounter more villains, maa ka pyaar and endless khana-peena. The story – credited to Grazing Goat Pictures and not to an individual – is flimsy, but the film works because the narrative strings together one wacky comical episode after another.

Akshay is great with physical comedy, acting here not just with his face and voice, but with his entire body. Even in the supremely boring song Cinema dekhe mamma, his dance moves and gestures are a hoot. His willingness to make a fool of himself works well for Singh Is Bliing.

The 48-year-old oozes charm, which is a good thing because it would otherwise be impossible to accept a 54-year-old Rati playing his mother (biology is clearly not Prabhudheva’s strength). It’s also worth asking if the tremendously fit Akshay does not realise that he unwittingly emphasises his advancing years by playing the sweetheart of an actress 24 years his junior. It is a pity that his confidence in his stardom does not translate into acting with women his age.

Nevertheless, Akshay is one of this film’s biggest strengths. The other is Lara, who has been poorly served by Bollywood since she first entered films. Her penchant for comedy was evident in Housefull and even in the unsuccessful Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. Why doesn’t Hindi cinema have more to offer her? She is a riot in Singh Is Bliing, killing every scene in which she appears as Emily, an interpreter between Sara who can’t speak Hindi and Raftaar who doesn’t know English. Wish there was more of her in this film and in films in general.

Sara has very few dialogues, but the director makes up for that by letting her flying fists and agile limbs do the talking in scene after scene in which she bashes up bad guys. Good job, Amy! Quite unusually for Hindi cinema, far from seeking the hero’s protection, she protects him in one scene. The film also delivers a message – one that Akshay has been championing off screen too – that women must learn self-defence techniques. While it would be naïve to see this as an all-in-one solution, it is certainly one of many that could work together to end gender-related violence.


The positive messaging is a tiny step forward, since Akshay and Prabhu’s previous collaboration was the all-pervasively sexist, disturbingly misogynistic Rowdy Rathore. Not that Singh Is Bliing shrugs off sexism altogether. Disappointingly, the film features a stock joke about an overweight woman’s unsuitability for marriage and another about a woman with a blackened face.  

Singh Is Bliing’s songs are so-so, except for the hilarious Dil kare chu che in which the tune, lyrics, Akshay and wonderful Lara had me laughing so much that I got a stomach ache. Equally enjoyable is the later use of the song in the background score in a couple of juvenile scenes. Chu che is a fine example of intelligent stupidity – and no, that’s not a contradiction in terms.


All that being said, your ability to enjoy the film depends on your tolerance for Bollywood’s male-centricity and the industry’s Sikh cliche. Despite Amy’s fisticuffs and Lara’s talent, there is no question that Akshay is the centre of this universe. And though the jovial Sikh is a positive stereotype, it is exasperating that mainstream Hindi cinema refuses to portray members of the community as anything but jolly to the point of being OTT, breaking into Bhangra at the drop of a hat and/or deeply patriotic individuals waxing eloquent about nationalism and Sikh honour.

The world will perhaps end the day Bollywood delivers a grim, non-Bhangra-dancing, cowardly, unpatriotic, unfunny Sikh character. I wonder if the Sikh community will even want that. 

While we consider that question, there’s Singh Is Bliing. The name probably has some deep meaning in the minds of the film’s team, but to me all it is is an effort to remind us of Anees Bazmee’s Singh Is Kinng (2008) which remains one of Akshay’s biggest box-office successes till date. SIK was a more substantial, more memorable film. SIB’s lack of substance makes it forgettable, but while it lasts it is a pleasant, mostly harmless, rib-tickling, side-splitting affair.

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
142 minutes

Photographs courtesy: 
(1)Poster & Chu che still: https://www.facebook.com/SIBTheFilm/
(2) Picture of Akshay & Prabhudheva: Sterling Communications


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REVIEW 350: JAZBAA

October 9, 2015, 9:02 am
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Release date:
October 9, 2015
Director:
Sanjay Gupta
Cast:


Language:
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Irrfan Khan, Shabana Azmi, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Atul Kulkarni, Jackie Shroff
Hindi


Fly-by-night feminists are India’s latest social trend. They’re the ones who have no particular commitment to women’s rights or may even be closeted misogynists, but mouth what they consider politically correct lines anyway, because feminism is the fad of the day.

How can you tell that they are not committed? That’s easy. Because liars and fakes almost inevitably inadvertently reveal their true colours through their own words.

It’s this fashionable fake feminism that produced that silly, mixed-up Vogue Empower commercial featuring pretty visuals of Deepika Padukone and other women flashing by with a pretentious voiceover defending, among other things, a wife’s right to cheat on her husband. Umm, would the commercial makers have publicly defended a man’s right to cheat on his wife?

Jazbaa, a remake of the South Korean film Seven Days, is born of this trend. After 20 years of depicting women as nothing but sexy bodies and glam objects in a world run by men, director Sanjay Gupta is now advocating women’s rights. He fails to mask his true convictions though.

So, while Jazbaa’s central character is a strong woman, he reassures his traditional audience that all’s well with their world by ending on a tight close-up of a supporting male character as he explains why he let the woman he loves walk away. “Arrey, mohabbat hai isiliye toh jaane diya,” he says, “Zidd hoti toh abhi baahon mein hoti,” which roughly translates to, “She’s my love, that’s why I let her go. If she was a mere obsession she would have been in my arms now.” Her own agency be damned. Not surprisingly, the predominantly male audience in the hall where I watched this film cheered at this line, after having watched the previous two hours in silence.

Jazbaa makes all the right noises about rape, with a victim’s mother telling a lawyer that what she did in open court was no different from what the rapist did to her daughter in a closed room. At the same time, the film needlessly keeps replaying the rape scene under the pretext of adding a new piece to the puzzle each time, though in truth only one revelation is made through all those retellings. If the depiction of that scene had been more explicit, I suspect the mood in my local theatre may have been more jubilant. As it happens, this is Sanjay playing at being a feminist, so he does not go all the way on that front either. The result: it is neither all-out sleazy nor sensitive.  

Jazbaa also appears to make the right noises about female foeticide, but a conversation about a  son-obsessed husband asking his wife to abort a female foetus sounds discomfittingly close to being anti-abortion as much as it is anti-sex-selective-abortion. The film is also irritatingly conventional in its deification of mothers and its dismissiveness towards paternal love. Wish Team Jazbaa had given more thought to its messaging on such crucial, complex issues.

The story is  about an extremely successful lawyer called Anuradha Verma (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) who has no qualms about defending the scum of the earth, as long as they pay her fee. Anuradha is a single mother. One day her little daughter Sanaya (Sara Arjun) is kidnapped by a stranger who demands as ransom that she should fight to free a man called Niyaaz (Chandan Roy Sanyal) who is on death row for raping and murdering a young artist called Sia (Priya Banerjee).


Anuradha has just days to cobble together a credible defence. She is assisted in this by her friend and secret admirer Yohann (Irrfan Khan) who has been suspended from the Mumbai Police on corruption charges. Other players in this script include Sia’s mother Garima Choudhry (Shabana Azmi), her lawyer (Atul Kulkarni) and a politician called Mahesh Makhlai (Jackie Shroff).


In this sea of usually wonderful supporting actors, the only notable performance comes from Irrfan who has the panache to pull off the dialoguebaazi his character is endowed with. Besides, he is so charming that it’s tough to be angry even when he utters that final bombastic line.

Aishwarya immerses herself in the role, and for the most part is impressive as Anuradha. She also looks stunning and appears comfortable throwing punches in a scene where she confronts a villain. Too often though she confuses emoting with screaming out loud. There is one moment when she briefly spots her abducted daughter, and wails and wails and wails in a scene that is so elongated and then later repeated that it is evident the director was impressed with it. In fact, it’s her low point in the film, especially since Irrfan enters the picture at the end of the replay and has his own emotional outburst – in one fell swoop, he overshadows her as a performer. Still, hats off to her for having risked appearing in the same frame as one of the country’s most gifted actors. Besides, Ash does feisty nicely and I enjoyed her eloquence in Jazbaa’s courtroom.

It’s confused philosophy notwithstanding, Jazbaa is well-paced and often engaging till the last 15 minutes when too many twists pile up. Yes, one pivotal revelation comes as a surprise, but if you think about it, the plot makes no sense and is riddled with loopholes. For instance, if you are a famous person who does not want your connection to a crime to become public, why would you sit in the audience in court during the trial? If not to manipulate us, why would a major character’s face suggest that a person is dead, when he could not have thought so?

And then there are questions that reveal the big zero that is the film’s plot: If a lawyer is unscrupulous enough to take up any paying case, why bother with a convoluted scheme to get her to take up yours? Even if you don’t want her to know that you are paying for Niyaaz’s defence, could you not have sent someone to front you and hire her services directly?

All the megawatt casting, stylish camerawork and blue-gray tints in the world cannot alter the fact that when it comes down to brass tacks and a scrutiny of the climax, Jazbaa is a hollow film.

Rating (out of five): **

Footnote: I didn’t notice whether they got their opening credits right, but Aishwarya’s name is misspelt – as Aishwariya – in the closing credits. Perhaps viewers will forgive this lack of finesse, I don’t know, but I’ve been a sub-editor and such carelessness just kills me.

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
122 minutes

Photograph courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/JazbaaFilm


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REVIEW 351: PYAAR KA PUNCHNAMA 2

October 16, 2015, 9:10 am
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Release date:
October 16, 2015
Director:
Luv Ranjan
Cast:


Language:
Kartik Aaryan, Nushrat Bharucha, Sonalli Sehgall, Ishita Sharma, Omkar Kapoor, Sunny Nijjar
Hindi


If it wasn’t trying to cash in on the success of the first film, Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 could have been called All Women Are Bitches, All Men Think With Their Penises.

The template is exactly the same as PKP1: three young men who are flatmates and best buddies get romantically involved with women who are manipulative witches from the word go. The men are unhappy almost from the start of these relationships but are too stupid to see it (actually, the film portrays it as innocence and natural goodness, not stupidity). Their lives go downhill as the women get meaner by the day, until the men finally finally put them in their place and escape.

So determined is director Luv Ranjan to stick to the prototype that gave him a sleeper hit in 2011, that he retains four out of the six members of PKP1’s lead cast. The tall strapping curly-haired model Raayo S. Bakhirta has been replaced with another tall strapping curly-haired model type (Sunny Nijjar). The song Bandh gaya patta, dekho bann gaya kutta (The leash has been tied / Look, he’s become a dog) is also repeated here. And actor Kartik Aaryan, who delivered a many-minutes-long woman-bashing monologue in Part 1, is given a similar tirade of a similar length in Part 2 too. This is unapologetically repetitive and unoriginal fare.

Like PKP1, PKP2 too is an all-out anti-women hate fest pretending to be a comedy. It also unwittingly degrades men – so subtly that the fellows laughing their guts out in the hall where I watched the film did not seem to get it. It’s possible the writers and director haven’t got it either.

As with PKP1, the women in PKP2 too are all nasty, rotten creatures. If they’re not nagging and lying, acting spoilt or downright unpleasant, they are cheating on their boyfriends or mooching off them, and a male character actually explains that the men still tolerate them because of that one thing they have to offer. Err, will someone tell him he could get that one thing with no strings attached by paying for the services of a sex worker? He seems to know nothing of this.

PKP2’s three male leads are in relationships bereft of a single redeeming feature – no warmth, no understanding, no friendship, yet they persist in permitting their girlfriends to treat them like turds. It appears to be this film’s contention that men are so lacking in self-respect, so foolish and so enslaved by their crotches that they will swallow insults, infidelity and lack of integrity, just so long as there is sex at the end of the tunnel.

The film’s unrealistic screenplay lacks balance, as was the case with PKP1. It is telling that between these two films, Luv Ranjan went all-out feminist with Akaash Vani, a film on a subject that’s anathema to most people: marital rape. While dealing with a women’s rights issue, he gave us a ton of good guys as a counterpoint to one bad man. He claimed in a recent interview to The Indian Express that PKP1happened because“I wanted to do a film against love…I wanted to show how in love the whole concept of relationship can become troublesome”. How come a film that’s supposedly “against love” turned out to be against women only?

Tut tut, the director thinks those who call him a misogynist are too touchy. “Our metropolitan societies have become hypersensitive and we can’t take a joke,” he says. Oh puhlease, Mr Ranjan, at least be honest about the fact that these two films are a transparent bid to cash in on the prevailing misogyny among Hindi cinema’s male-dominated audience. If that were not the case, what are the chances that you will make PKP3 with gender roles swapped, an equal measure of unbridled male-bashing and not even one halfway decent man anywhere in the picture? For the record, such a concept is equally contemptible.

Since PKP2 is almost a carbon copy of PKP1, what’s right with itis exactly what was right withthe first film: the cast has potential and the production values are slick. Since the team has rolled out pretty much the same film again, I’m not bothering to repeat all the points I made in 2011: do read the review I wrote back then (link).

Here’s an additional point: women often turn on their own to earn brownie points with men in this patriarchal world, but guys, in a world where you hold all the aces, can you be so foolish as to celebrate a film that unwittingly portrays you too so poorly? Do you agree with PKP2’s contention that your lives revolve entirely around the demands of your nether regions?

Your call.

Rating (out of five): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
136 minutes

Photograph courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/PKP2Official

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PRIYANKA CHOPRA IN QUANTICO, COURT AT THE OSCARS / COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

October 20, 2015, 12:23 am
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IT MATTERS, NASEERSAAB

“I don’t know why we hanker after this Oscar business,” says Naseeruddin Shah. Yes, let us not “hanker”, but let us not be dismissive of a global stage either

By Anna MM Vetticad


Two important — seemingly unrelated — events occurred on the Indian entertainment scene in the past month. First, the National Award-winning Marathi film Courtwas selected as India’s entry for the race to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar next year. And Quantico— the American serial that marks Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra’s international TV debut — finally premiered in the US and then India, following a several-months-long publicity blitzkrieg in both countries.
One involves a cinematic work, the other a teleshow. One an annual occurrence, the other on an unprecedented scale.
What is the connection, you ask?
There is one. It is the question that surfaces each year around the time India, like most other countries, chooses its Oscar entry. And that question is: why do we care?
This year it came from one of India’s most respected actors. When asked about Court’s chances at the Oscars, Naseeruddin Shah reportedly said: “I don’t really care about the Oscars. Courtis one of the finest films and in fact the best film to have released in recent times. I don’t know why we hanker after this Oscar business… I think it should be enough for makers of Court that the film has been liked and much appreciated in our own country and that is what matters.”
As Uriah Heep might have said, I would like to ’umbly disagree with Naseersaab.
Acceptance from your primary audience is obviously important, but unless an artiste chooses to limit herself, why should anything be “enough”? Wider reach matters. A global stage matters. It matters not just to individuals, but also to societies as a whole, not just because a larger audience means more money, but because it translates into several long-term benefits.
Film artistes are influential due to the reach of cinema. And so, every time an Indian film artiste speaks on a platform in another country, she has the opportunity to demystify India just that little bit abroad. Every time an Indian star performs in an overseas production that is worthy of her stature at home, she could endear India just that little bit more to people of other nations.
“Worthy” is crucial here. The idea is not to be a token brown-skinned prop in an inconsequential role or to play a part in pigeonholing an entire race. I remember Anil Kapoor telling me that between Slumdog Millionaire and the TV series 24, he turned down several scripts requiring him to play a stereotypical, caricaturish Indian. Last year, Chopra told me she absolutely would not accept a role abroad that would “cater to the stereotype of what Indians are like”.
Over the years, Team Slumdog, Anil on 24, Shashi Kapoor and Irrfan Khan in their multiple ventures abroad (not counting Khan’s embarrassingly marginal appearance in The Amazing Spider-man 2, Om Puri in East Is East and Nimrat Kaur in Homeland, among others — sometimes playing Indians, sometimes not — have served to unobtrusively remind some of the most powerful countries and moneyed audiences that Indians are not ETs. You know, like Apu from The Simpsons?
Complementing these artistes’ work on the global stage are those whose internationally acclaimed home-grown creations have taken Indian culture abroad, from Satyajit Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Mira Nair to youngsters like director Neeraj Ghaywan, whose Masaan won two awards at 2015’s Cannes Film Festival, and Chaitanya Tamhane, whose Court earned two trophies at Venice 2014. India needs more of them, familiarising foreigners with who we are in ways that a career diplomat would find hard to achieve.
The obvious pay-offs are enhanced bank balances and exposure for Indian artistes. Less obvious is another effect: the potential of a country’s cinema to make the culture of that country attractive to the world. US embassies and businesses — from clothing chains to pizza joints and fried chicken — owe much to Hollywood, which has been America’s most effective brand ambassador across the globe.
This is why it is important for India’s film industries not to have a frog-in-the-well attitude, but to work hard towards improving their international distribution and marketing. As long as it is done with dignity, there is no shame in promoting a beautiful film like Courtat the Oscars. After all, a win at the world’s most-watched film awards function is every film-marketing professional’s dream.
Besides, you can’t put a price tag on soft diplomacy.
Could there be a more effective effort at de-exoticising India in American minds than Aishwarya Rai responding to this question from talk-show host David Letterman in 2005: “Do you live with your parents? … Is that common in India for older children to live with their parents?” Sweetly, yet with a knife-like thrust, Rai replied: “It’s fine to live with your parents, because it’s also common in India that we don’t have to take appointments with our parents to meet for dinner.”
Today, as sections of the Western media use India’s remarkable anti-rape movement to tar the entire country with one brush, there are few better illustrations of our social complexities than an Indian woman — Chopra — telling CNN.com in the run-up to Quantico: “My Dad always told me, ‘As a girl, you should not be someone who tries to fit into a glass slipper. You should shatter the glass ceiling,’ and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
So please, let us not “hanker” after global recognition, but in the global village that we inhabit, why “should” any space be considered “enough”?
(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)
(This column was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on October 10, 2015)
Original link: 
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/it-matters-naseersaab/article7742604.ece
Photo caption: (From top) Priyanka Chopra in Quantico; and a poster of Court
Photographs courtesy: 
(1) Quantico: https://www.facebook.com/QuanticoABC/ 
(2) Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_(film)
Note: These photographs were not sourced from The Hindu Businessline 

Previous instalment of Film Fatale: “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics”
http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2015/09/govt-propaganda-against-ftii-students.html


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REVIEW 352: SHAANDAAR

October 21, 2015, 12:20 pm
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BOLLYWOOD’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS MARRIED ACTRESSES WHO ARE MOTHERS / COLUMN PUBLISHED ON BBC HINDI

October 22, 2015, 10:32 pm
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(This is the English version of an article published on bbc.com/hindi/ on October 21, 2015.)

MOMS MUST BE MOMS BUT DADS WILL BE BOYS

Though Bollywood is marginally less resistant to married actresses now, it still insists on giving only certain kinds of roles to women post-marriage and post-motherhood

By Anna MM Vetticad


A decade back, chances are she would have been the hero’s or heroine’s mother. Today, she is the heroine herself.

As trade analysts collate the collections of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Jazbaa, there is more to discuss than money. In an industry that is notoriously disinterested in women post-30, post-marriage and post-babies, Jazbaa– terribly flawed though it is – is a milestone of sorts. After all, how often does Bollywood give the central character in a mainstream film to a 41-year-old married actress returning after a five-year hiatus during which she had a child? This is particularly heartening, coming as it does after a then-49-year-old Sridevi hit the box-office bull’s eye with English Vinglish in 2012 following a 15-year break, and Madhuri Dixit had a moderate success with Dedh Ishqiyalast year.

All three stories revolve around their female protagonists. There is a catch though. While an increasingly experimental Bollywood has become marginally less resistant to married actresses in the past decade, it still gives these women limited choices.

For instance, the industry seems determined that real-life mothers must play mothers on screen if they want to be leading ladies. Ash in Jazbaa, Sri in English Vinglish, Kajol in her post-baby films and Madhuri in Aaja Nachle have all been mums in roles that have given centrality to their motherhood. Dedh Ishqiya had an explanation for why Madhuri’s character was childless.

This is not to say that these have been inadequate roles or that on-screen motherhood is undesirable. Quite to the contrary. But where is the variety? Where are the frothy romances starring these actresses, the comedies or stories of feisty older women who are not married and not mothers?

Meanwhile, their male peers are picking from a range of genres and roles, singing and dancing as singletons and husbands, sometimes fathers but most often not, usually laughably younger than their real-life age and courting actresses two decades their junior. With older heroines though, care is taken that their characters match their real-life age, have significant gravitas and that actors around their age play their romantic partners.

Producers insist this is what viewers want. The truth though is they don’t give viewers an alternative, the biggest budgets are still earmarked for male-centric entertainers, major male stars usually don’t want to act with women even close to their age (49-year-old Shah Rukh Khan’s repeated pairing with Kajol, 41, being an exception) and the options offered to older actresses reflect Bollywood’s own narrow-mindedness.

The prevailing mindset is best illustrated by a conversation I had with director Deepak Shivdasani before the release of his film Yeh Raaste Hai Pyaar Ke (2001) starring Madhuri, Ajay Devgn and Preity Zinta. When I asked if Madhuri’s role in the film suited her stardom, he misunderstood. “Don’t worry,” he assured me, “I’ve given her a role that suits the dignity of a married woman.”

Fourteen years later, at least two critics last week felt the need to assure us in reviews that Aishwarya’s role in Jazbaa is “age appropriate”. Yet the press barely protests when men touching 50 play 20- and 30-somethings.

Well, Bollywood producers, writers, directors and journalists are not living in a social vacuum. Like the rest of us, they emerge from our patriarchal society that by and large believes marriage elevates a woman’s stature and expects wives to subordinate their dreams to their spouses’ and children’s needs. It goes without saying that in such an industry, women will have limited options.

They deserve more, but until they get it, every baby step Bollywood takes towards Aishwarya, Madhuri, Sridevi and their ilk is a step worth toasting.

(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)

BBC Hindi link:
http://www.bbc.com/hindi/india/2015/10/151018_married_bollywood_heroine_tk?ocid=socialflow_twitter

Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aishwarya_Rai_Bachchan

Note: This photograph was not sourced from BBC Hindi


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REVIEW 353: TITLI

October 29, 2015, 11:39 pm
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Release date:
October 30, 2015
Director:
Kanu Behl
Cast:

Language:
Shashank Arora, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Ranvir Shorey, Amit Sial, Lalit Behl
Hindi


Titli is one of the most gripping Hindi films to come to theatres this year. It is entertaining in a hard-to-explain sort of way because it is so heart-stoppingly matter of fact about the horrific, sad, almost bizarre reality check it delivers.

“Reality check” because its universe is far removed from the Hum Saath Saath Hain brand of family that Sooraj Barjatya and many of his colleagues have popularised among Bollywood audiences. Vikram, Bawla and Titli in this film are together not for the saccharine reasons that have bound Barjatya’s many clans. They don’t sing, dance and beam at the camera. They don’t joyously celebrate festivals, marriages and every day of their lives bedecked in designerwear. They don’t match their clothes to their wall paint and furniture. The most these three brothers can afford or bother with is to shave and appear less scruffy when they try to get a bride for the youngest of the three, the interestingly named Titli. They share a home by an accident of birth and an inexplicable bond that comes from the happenstance of being born to the same parents.

When we first meet them, Titli is straining at the leash, trying to get away from the life forced on him by his violent, car-jacking siblings. He is desperately saving money when the elder two discover that he wants out. They decide to get him married. A wife will not only tie him down, they figure, she will also be a big help in their trade. The young female entrant into their all-male household – which includes their eerily quiet father – has a strange story of her own.


Titli is gritty. It is often violent, entirely disturbing, occasionally tough to watch, unexpectedly amusing in flashes and at every step of the way, compelling. What makes it worthwhile even when it is challenging is the non-voyeuristic manner of the portrayal. Besides, despite the dismal scenario in which it is set, in an unlikely alliance that emerges through the story, there shines an unexpected ray of hope.


So assured is his hand on the baton, that it is hard to believe Kanu Behl is a debutant in direction. Some explanation for his steady vision comes from his CV: he has assisted Dibakar Banerjee in the past and was the co-writer of Love Sex Aur Dhokawith Dibakar (who is a co-producer of this film). No doubt it helps too that Kanu’s co-writer on Titli is Sharat Katariya, the writer-director of my favourite Hindi film of 2015 so far, Dum Laga Ke Haisha.

Like Dibakar, it is clear that Kanu and/or Sharat know Delhi well. This is evident, for instance, from how specific they are about the locality where they place their parivaarof Dillivaasis in the story. Jamna Paar (the other side of the River Yamuna) is not a standard Hindi film location. For most snooty south Delhi inhabitants, it has for long signified a lesser part of the Capital which the wealthy do not inhabit. They have less knowledge of the city’s geography and sociology than Team Titli who are aware that there are worlds within worlds, that rising property prices have meant that many moneyed families too reside here. And so Vikram, Bawla and Titli are not just generally placed somewhere in Jamna Paar but precisely in a narrow bylane of a messy mohalla near Jamna Paar’s Mother Dairy plant.

This element in the detailing is as delightful as the banians the men wear at home, discoloured from the original white to a sweat-and-overuse-induced dullness. It is among the many reasons – the unrelenting intensity included – that make Titli such an oddly pleasurable experience.


If I have a grouse against the film, it is that in the post-interval portion, certain plot points and especially the explanation for Titli’s getaway plan get slightly confusing. And though I understand the need to shock with bloodletting especially to convince us of Vikram and Bawla’s consciencelessness and unblinking amorality, I do not want to watch a self-indulgently extended puking scene in which the camera wanders close to the mouth of a puking man.

That being said, the film gives us much more to celebrate than not. It is, for instance, a sermonless, unobtrusive smack on the face of patriarchy. It is also a twisted ode to love and second chances. As for Titli’s cast, they are uniformly, intimidatingly good and highly believable. I confess I have not so far found Ranvir Shorey interesting – that changes with his performance as Vikram in this film. Even lovelier is Amit Sial as Bawla. This wonderful actor ought to be routinely cast as a leading man in films. Newcomer Shashank Arora plays Titli with great restraint and Shivani Raghuvanshi as his wife Neelu is brilliant. The two are so amazingly real, it’s as though the film’s casting director plucked them out of real homes in Dilli’s Jamna Paar in a grimy colony somewhere in the vicinity of Mother Dairy.

Titli was screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival last May. It has taken 17 months for this remarkable film to come to mainstream Indian theatres. That is 17 months too many.

It is but natural for Dibakar to back a film that shares his cinematic worldview. The pleasant surprise here is that Titli’s co-producer is Aditya Chopra, whose directorial blockbusters so far are the polar opposite of this film. The Dibakar-Aditya collaboration bodes well for the future of filmmaking in the country. Together they have introduced us to an important new voice in Indian cinema with Titli. Welcome to the national scene, Kanu Behl.

Rating (out of five): ***1/2

CBFC Rating (India):

A
Running time:
116 minutes 

Poster courtesy: Yash Raj Films



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REVIEW 354: PREM RATAN DHAN PAYO

November 11, 2015, 7:33 pm
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Release date:
November 12, 2015
Director:
Sooraj Barjatya
Cast:

Language:
Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Deepak Dobriyal, Swara Bhaskar, Armaan Kohli
Hindi


An early scene in Rajshri Productions’ Prem Ratan Dhan Payogives us an indicator of the ancient values this film seems keen to propagate. Yuvraaj Vijay Singh is meeting journalists in the run-up to his ascension to the throne of his kingdom. A bemused newsperson asks him about the appropriateness of the ornate coronation ceremony in this modern world. It’s almost funny, says the man. “You think traditions are funny?” an affronted Yuvraaj shoots back softly.

His offended tone is genuine. I could almost picture the gentle-voiced, quaintly conservative writer-director Sooraj Barjatya throwing precisely that question in precisely that tone to a critic bemused at the extreme conservatism of his latest film. It would be a genuinely felt question because Sooraj – as I gathered from a long interaction I once had with him – is actually convinced of the purity of the regressive scenarios he portrays in his films.

The director of megahits Maine Pyar Kiya (MPK), Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!(HAHK), Hum Saath-Saath Hain, Vivahand the not-so-successful Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon returns to the big screen after a 9-year gap with Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. This Salman Khan-Sonam Kapoor-starrer lacks even those few qualities that made his earlier ventures bearable for folk like me who find his settings and worldview unbearable. MPK, for instance, had sweet songs and a Salman whose youthful innocence somewhat compensated for his acting inadequacies. HAHK had Madhuri Dixit’s electric pizzazz, peppy numbers and the novelty value of 14 songs in a single film even for an India bred on musicals. Vivah had emotional heft – I guiltily confess that I sobbed through it, despite being conscious of how conformist, maudlin and melodramatic it was.

Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (PRDP) has none of the above. The story is dull. The songs – usually considered a Rajshri USP – are an utter bore. Twenty-six years after he debuted as a hero with Sooraj’s directorial debut MPK,Salman’s shot at a double role in PRDP merely highlights his limitations. That trademark charming goofiness fails him here – he seems to be trying too hard. Playing his fiancé, Sonam Kapoor is as stunning and stylish as ever but it’s hard to look beyond the fact that she looks young enough to be Salman’s daughter. Coming as she is from the box-office success of Khoobsurat in 2014, at a stage when Hindi filmdom is offering marginally less limiting roles to its heroines, it is just as hard not to wonder why she saw this baap-beti romance as a positive stamp on her CV. The talented Deepak Dobriyal and Swara Bhaskar too are sinfully wasted here. The only one who comes off looking good is Neil Nitin Mukesh, an under-rated actor who really really deserves better than this film. In short, PRDP is insufferable.

The lacklustre story is set in Pritampur, where Rajkumari Maithili (Sonam) is set to join her fiancé, the Yuvraaj (Salman), for his crowning. Before her arrival, an accident brings into the royal fold a doppelganger, Prem Dilwaale (also Salman), and his sidekick Kanhaiya (Deepak Dobriyal). Prem is a small-time actor and Ram bhakt from Ayodhya. Also in the picture are a loyal Diwan (Anupam Kher), the prince’s estranged half sisters Chandrika (Swara) and Radhika, his half brother Ajay (Neil) and Ajay’s sneaky lieutenant Chirag Singh (Armaan Kohli).

That the story and storytelling style are tedious is not PRDP’s only problem. That the setting is feudal and patriarchal is not the problem either. The problem is that the director glorifies and romanticises every feudal, patriarchal, backward practice portrayed in this yawn-inducing film.

Take for instance a flashback during which Diwansaab explains the tension between the Yuvraaj and his sundry siblings. Apparently the dead Maharaj (Sameer Dharmadhikari) had a wandering eye. An affair (or was it an nth marriage?) with a singer resulted in two daughters. In their childhood, the many fruit of the king’s loins all sang, danced and played together in pretty clothes in a Sheesh Mahal above a waterfall, in the way humungous joint families have all sung, danced and played together in every Sooraj Barjatya film so far. The king’s philandering is passed off casually by the man himself as his “kamzori (weakness)”. The ensuing rifts, on the other hand, are blamed on auraton ke jhagde (women’s fights). How dare these stupid royal chicks expect monogamy or fidelity from their spouses, no?

To ensure that no one in the audience is left with any doubt about a woman’s place in the world, the Rajkumari says at one point in response to Vijay/Prem’s request for her cooperation in one of his schemes: Jaise Ram chahenge, Sita karegi (Sita will do what Ram wills). It is no coincidence that she is called Maithili, one of the many names of the Goddess Sita who is considered by some to be the epitome of unquestioning wifely obedience in the Hindu pantheon.

Elsewhere, the writer makes what I suspect is an effort to prove his progressiveness by giving us an extended sequence involving a horny Maithili begging Vijay/Prem to do the deed with her. That situation could have led to a discussion on the complex issue of consent, since at that point Maithili thinks she is dealing with Vijay and does not know of Prem’s existence. But to attribute such layered feminist writing to PRDP would be to give more credit than is due to a film that thinks women would naturally be lousy at football, that men would be naturally good at it (sports ke maamle mein ladies logon ko kuch kuch hota hai, you see!) and thinks it is being ultra-cool by including one feisty female football player in the story.

Frankly, spending so much time writing such a long review is in itself giving more credit than is due to this half-baked, lifeless, low-IQ film with its juvenile humour and family politics that resembles circumstances in the cheapest saas-bahu soaps now running on Hindi fiction TV.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):

U
Running time:
165 minutes


Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_Ratan_Dhan_Payo



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REVIEW 355: SPECTRE

November 21, 2015, 1:12 am
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Release date:
November 20, 2015
Director:
Sam Mendes
Cast:


Language:
Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes, Monica Bellucci, Naomie Harris
English


Is this the life you always wanted? Always in the shadows? Always looking behind you? These questions are gently tossed at James Bond by Dr Madeleine Swann during a brief conversation on a train in the latest Bond film Spectre.

“I never stop to think about it,” he replies.

“What will happen if you do?”

“Stop?” he asks.

“Yes,” she replies.

James does not know the answer.

It’s a quietly ruminative exchange that should have set the tone for a quietly ruminative new-age Bond flick, as hormonally charged as the series has been in the past, yet thoughtful too as it has been in recent years. The old Bond elements are all also on offer in this scene: he is sexy, she is gorgeous, the music is effective and they are travelling through stunning locations.

Unfortunately, although Spectre ticks off many of the boxes on the list of Bond essentials, the writing does little to lift it beyond being an enjoyable yet generic franchise film: not bad while it lasts, but the memory does not last much after the end, quite like James’ numerous love affairs.

Spectre starts with an unauthorised shooting in Mexico City involving James. He is making out with a beautiful woman when he takes off to fire at a man in the shadows in a hotel room. There follows an explosion, a collapsed building, a spot of wry humour in the middle of a high-adrenaline stunt sequence, a chase involving a helicopter and a stadium full of people. All this set to pulsating music. When the world’s most famous British secret agent gets back to the MI-6 office in London, he is suspended, but goes ahead with what is up his sleeve anyway.

This is vintage Bond fare so far, everything that fans have come to expect, including a haunting opening song in Sam Smith’s voice (lovely yet not great like the Academy Award-winning title track sung by Adele for Skyfall in 2012). What could have made Spectrespecial is a deeper exploration of the issue of surveillance that it brings up in the context of terror attacks – particularly relevant as we debate government intrusiveness in our own lives – and the unnerving personal bond James shares with the pivotal bad guy of the story. Regrettably though, director Sam Mendes and the writing team don’t dig deep into any of the plot elements, using them primarily to stitch together a bunch of fabulously shot even if not remarkably original action scenes. A pity since Sam earlier helmed the excellent Skyfall.

“You are a kite dancing around in a hurricane, Mr Bond,” says a character to James at one point. This line somehow seems apt for Spectre too, as the film struggles to strike a balance between the old-school Bond and the new.

Casino Royale knew precisely what it wanted to be, as it upped the IQ level and lowered the MCP-ism of the series without cutting down on its testosterone. In the pre-Casino Royale era, I wouldn’t have bothered to point out the silliness of a scene in which an aeroplane, smashed from all sides, races down a road but does not burst into flames because, well you know, our hero is piloting it. I wouldn’t have bothered to notice that James attacks a convoy of vehicles to rescue an abducted woman, without considering that she too could have been killed in his attack. I would not have bothered to ask why he did not tell a woman that she had no reason to be scared as he jumped down a building with her in his arms since he was aware there was a massive net below. I would not have asked, because those earlier films were unapologetic about their audacious stupidity. In the more intelligent post-Casino phase though, these questions do arise.

Spectre also sinfully wastes its talented cast. Ralph Fiennes is one of Britain’s finest actors and such a worthy successor to Dame Judi Dench as James’ boss M, but he is barely around in the story. And the amazing Monica Bellucci’s appearance as a grieving widow in Rome pushes Halle Berry down to the No. 2 spot on the roster of talented and acclaimed star actresses who have played much-hyped, impactless, inconsequential characters in Bond films.

Why did one of Europe’s most respected actresses accept this bit part? Why, after making such a big deal about the fact that at 50 she’s the oldest woman ever to be a female Bond appendage, did the producers squander away her presence? These are questions to ponder for those of us labouring under the mistaken notion that gender discrimination in cinema is limited to India.

To make matters worse, India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) seems to have shaved her role down further with a very abrupt chop right at the start of a love-making scene.

Lea Seydoux from Inglourious Basterds and Blue Is The Warmest Colour is more fortunate as Madeleine Swann (read: she fares better at the hands of the filmmaker, though the CBFC does not spare her either). Bond is a traditionally macho franchise – under the circumstances, hers is a substantial role. That being said, her chemistry with Daniel Craig’s James is limited.

Daniel himself chooses to play his character with the same expression on his face throughout. We get that he is hot and capable of a lot, but that knowledge cannot compensate for his low-energy performance in this film despite the alluring, trademark intense stare.

Spectre does have two stars though: Christoph Waltz as the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, earlier known as Franz Oberhauser; and the music. Christoph sinks his teeth into the film’s best written part with lip-smacking, salivating delight to deliver a deliciously cheeky, unrepentantly evil character. And Thomas Newman’s background score beats at our skulls like a persistent drummer, contributing as much to the adrenaline rush from the action scenes as the action itself.

Also interesting is the young British actor Ben Whishaw playing MI-6’s gadget-producing wizard Q. These elements combined with the film’s delectable locations, lavish cinematography, fisticuffs and chases are what makes Spectre worth a single viewing.  

But no more than that. At one point, the film makes an unexpected bow to an old Hollywood classic when Madeleine and James visit a Café L’Americain in Tangier. The place is as pretty as that other famous Moroccan city, Casablanca, where Rick’s Café Americain was located. Individually and in other films, Lea and Daniel have been wonderful. They ain’t no Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart though, at least not yet, and Spectreis unworthy of tying the shoelaces of Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca.  
Still, I enjoyed the deathly surface calm that pervades Spectreeven in its most charged-up scenes. What the film needed was richer writing. Without that, even Christoph Waltz and a fantastic background score can’t make it stand out.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):

U/A
Running time:
MPAA Rating (US):
147 minutes
PG-13 (for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and language)
Release date in US:
November 6

Photograph courtesy:https://www.facebook.com/SpectreMovie/


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REVIEW 356: X: PAST IS PRESENT

November 24, 2015, 8:15 am
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Release date:
November 20, 2015
Director:
Abhinav Shiv Tiwari, Anu Menon, Nalan Kumarasamy, Hemant Gaba, Pratim D. Gupta, Q, Raja Sen, Rajshree Ojha, Sandeep Mohan, Sudhish Kamath, Suparn Verma
Cast:







Language:
Rajat Kapoor, Anshuman Jha, Huma Qureshi, Radhika Apte, Swara Bhaskar, Aditi Chengappa, Usha Uthup, Bidita Bag, Gabriella Schmidt, Neha Mahajan, Parno Mitra, Pia Bajpai, Pooja Ruparel, Richa Shukla, Rii
Hindi, English, Tamil, Bengali


SPOILER ALERT: I’M TOO CHEESED OFF TO AVOID THEM

Have you ever been bored and angry with a film at the same time? It’s an awkward mix of feelings because one robs you of the energy to express the other.

Boredom dies down once the film in question is over though. The anger I felt against X: Past Is Present, however, is still very much there.

Remember that spoiler mentioned at the start? It is in the next paragraph.

Xmade me furious because beyond that lethargic pace and pretentious storytelling style (barring two segments), this is a film that takes sexual violence lightly. To use rape as the suspense element and nothing more in a purportedly thought-provoking film is no better than cracking a rape joke in a stupid comedy. Actually, the former is worse, because when you position yourself as something to be taken seriously, you had bloody well not trivialise such a grave issue.

The problem is not that this film uses sexual assault as the big revelation behind why a character behaves the way he does throughout the story. The problem is that the assault has no role other than being that big revelation, a rabbit pulled out of a hat by a too-clever-by-half team of filmmakers and writers in what appears to be an effort to elicit awe and admiration from us for them rather than shock, disgust, revulsion against the act and empathy for the victim.

The lack of compassion is not in the scene of the attack itself, but in the run-up to it. The build-up is so filled with an effort to impress us with technique, that by the time the depiction of the violence rolled around, I was left cold by it because I did not care for the character.

This is a pity because on its own, this part of the film – directed by Nalan Kumarasamy who earlier made the acclaimed Tamil film Soodhu Kavvum– could have yielded so much. Placed within X though, it seems like a post-script written on second thoughts.

That said, the film has emerged from a concept that clearly had potential. X has been put together by11 directors.It is not an anthology. Each director has handled a different segment in the same story. On paper, that sounds intriguing. Now that I’ve watched the film though, I can tell you that except for Nalan and Q (who earlier made Gandu), the rest are similar in their storytelling style here, including the ones who have been vastly stylistically different in their previous work.

For instance, if the credits had not told me so, I would not have guessed that Anu Menon and Rajshree Ojha were among the group of 11. Anu earlier made the sweetly romantic London Paris New York starring Aditi Rao Hydari and Ali Zafar. Rajshree made the Sonam Kapoor-starrer Aisha, a breezy retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma. In X, their approach to their segments is indistinguishable from the rest, complete with shadowy spaces and pointless camerawork. What purpose then was achieved by assembling so many directors for one project?

Incidentally, X is the story of a director called K (Rajat Kapoor) who we first meet at a film fest party where he bumps into a much younger woman (Aditi Chengappa) with evidently amorous intentions towards him. Soon they discover that K might have been involved with her mother. As they chat, K is disturbed by visions of the many lovers he has had over the years, through a series of flashbacks to 10 ladies either with Rajat or with Anshuman Jha playing a younger K.

Except for Nalan’s segment, in the rest of the flashbacks we barely see K. What we’re given instead are his voice or over-the-shoulder and other partial shots of him while the women are in focus. Perhaps the point being made is that in those moments of his life, he was not the central character, they were.

This cinematographic choice makes little sense though, since K seems to be focused on himself for the most part. It particularly works only in Q’s segment where a frenzied, alcohol/drug-ridden K discusses writer’s block with his housemaid. 

Since the camerawork does not match the script, it is distracting and comes across as being pompous. It’s as if the filmmakers were keener on style than substance.

Then in a village in Tamil Nadu the camera gives us a complete view of Anshuman when K meets a sexually adventurous local woman (Swara Bhaskar). This segment is like visual sunshine compared to the rest of X, but it should not have been part of this film because the subject it deals with is too crucial to have been given a mere passing mention. This is Nalan’s story.

In terms of acting, Swara, Rii (as K’s household help) and Radhika Apte (K’s feisty wife Rija) are the only ones who somewhat make a mark. The rest, including the otherwise dependable Huma Qureshi, are either done in by the stilted writing or consumed by the film’s pretentions to being something it is not.  

Among other things, X should spark off discussions about film reviewing since four of the project’s directors are or were film critics. Critics are influencers in ways that even big commercial producers do occasionally acknowledge. This translates into clout. If at some point in your career as a critic you realise your true calling is filmmaking, is it ethical to continue reviewing films by people you may simultaneously be approaching with your script/s?

Irrespective of the precise route taken by the gentlemen critics involved in X, this is a debate we must have. Because their career move gives fuel to film industry folk who assume that reviewing is usually a stop-gap arrangement for aspiring filmmakers; and allege that film critics misuse their power.

As for another point made by some filmmakers, that making a film is the ultimate test for a critic, I humbly submit that that’s a silly contention. A critic is a consumer of cinema and a creator of literature on cinema, not a creator of cinema. The two jobs require different skills that a single individual need not possess. If I write about problems I experience on a flight, would the airline be justified in telling me to shut up unless I am capable of running an airline myself? Filmmakers often try to discredit film critics by claiming that those who do not make films are not qualified to comment on them. Don’t fall for that line.

These are matters worth discussing whether or not you have seen this film. Before that let’s wrap up this review: X emerges from an interesting experimental concept that comes to naught.

Rating (out of five): *

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/XTheFilm/


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REVIEW 357: TAMASHA

November 28, 2015, 6:21 am
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Release date:
November 27, 2015
Director:
Imtiaz Ali
Cast:
Language:
Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone
Hindi


There is so much to love about Tamasha, yet it is such a cruel tease.

Have you ever watched a film which gives you two alluring, intriguing people in the first half and then spirits one of them away through most of the second half? That’s what happens here with Deepika Padukone’s character. It is not that she is insignificant. Quite to the contrary. Even when she disappears from the screen for large swathes of time, her presence can be felt because it is she who is largely responsible for steering Ranbir Kapoor’s character’s trajectory. Yet her physical absence is disappointing, as is the fact that her role in the film becomes completely about how she shapes him and nothing more.

Towards the end of Tamasha when the boy asks her, “Aur aap? Koi toh hongi aap? (And you? You must surely be someone?)” I wanted to weep in response because she – the character and the star – are both so luminous and dynamic when they are around, that it hurts to have discovered almost nothing about her through the film.

I know, I know, it’s his story. But her story seemed like it would have been so fascinating too!

It is a measure of how excellently written and acted the male protagonist is, that Tamasha is memorable all the same.

The film begins with a sweet little boy (Yash Sehgal) in a hill station listening to a storyteller. He is filled with questions for the old man (Piyush Mishra) as he is told that every story he hears is just a variation of every other story ever told.

As the credits end we are transported to Corsica in France where a man meets a woman. He is the little boy all grown up now, she is a complete unknown. She has just lost all her money and identification documents, he will run out of money in a couple of days by which time someone back home will be wiring cash to her. They decide to help each other with no strings attached, no introductions, no names and life details revealed, but to spend the next seven days together.

When two magnetic personalities arrive at such an agreement, what do you think will happen?

Aha, it’s not what you are thinking.

In many ways, Tamasha seems to be writer-director Imtiaz Ali’s response to those viewers and critics (I’m not among them) whose objection to his recent works has been that he is re-telling the same story again and again. So determined is he to disagree that he even takes a shot of the curving sweep of a mountainside – familiar from his earlier films – and stands it on its head with the help of cinematographer K. Ravi Varman, hugging the road and adjoining rockfaces with the lens before turning his gaze on to the sky above. In a film packed with spectacular visuals, this one still stands out.  
The story itself turns the conventional romance on its head. It is not just about a boy meeting a girl, the hurdles in their path and love conquering all in the end. It is a film about writing your own story, about young people making their own choices, about following your dreams because that’s what and who you are meant to be, about not allowing others to script your life. It is also about loving a person as s/he is, while recognising who s/he might and could be.

It is a film that compels us to ponder over what else might have been in the tales we have heard of Romeo and Juliet, Ram and Sita, Heer and Ranjhaa, Soni and Mahiwal, Laila and Majnu, Aladdin and his princess, Helen and Paris.

This is a film that takes Prithviraj Chauhan’s Sanjukta to a church. A story that transports its storyteller from a swish eatery on a Mediterraneanisland to a dhaba in Delhi; where the stage travels from Shimla to Corsica, Kolkata, Delhi and Tokyo; and you watch as people listen to a man’s passion even when they do not quite recognise his words. A film in which a character reminds us that there is really no difference between Jamuna and Yamuna, Sanjukta and Sanyukta, Moses and Musa, Isaa and Jesus, Brahma and Ibrahim, unless we want to see one.

Tamasha does this all by melding a contemporary cinematic narrative with theatre and oral storytelling traditions. In particular, this blend gives us one of the most riveting introductory passages to a film ever seen in Bollywood. A.R. Rahman’s music is the throbbing heartbeat of Tamasha. Irshad Kamil’s lyrics make you want to listen to the songs instead of merely hearing them.

And at the centre of it all are the most electric screen couple Hindi cinema has seen since Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol first teamed up.

When Tamasha gets poignant, it breaks the heart. When it’s funny though, it is unrelentingly so, especially in the opening hour during which Ranbir and Deepika tread lightly, as lightly as that fluffy little white number she wears in a seaside town. The humour remains consistent and effective throughout, barring that awkward scene towards the end when the two leads do their take on Japanese accents. He is a great mimic (doing Dev Anand even better than Devsaab might have done), she has the world’s most beautiful smile. He does not take off his shirt and flash his biceps at us for even a moment; she wears make-up that seems non-existent and does not find a single excuse for flesh-flashing glamour.

This is not that kind of film.  

In the first half, it almost feels like Deepika overshadows Ranbir, but you realise at some point that that is because we are looking at her character through his character’s eyes and so, like him, we are utterly, completely captivated. And then post-interval the tone and mood change. She is still self-contained, a free spirit, but he is a caged bird, and that is when Ranbir explodes on screen. Tamasha is possibly the best that the two stars have ever been in a film. 

In fact, but for the nagging dissatisfaction caused by the marginalisation of her character, and the unevenness that that factor lends to the narrative, Tamashais wonderful. In Jab We Met (JWM), there was no question that Kareena Kapoor’s Geet was the fulcrum of the film but the treatment of Shahid Kapoor’s Aditya was never inadequate. No doubt he was a supporting player in her story, but he was still a person unto himself. Deepika’s Tara in the second half of Tamasha, however, becomes entirely about Ranbir’s Ved in a way that leaves us thirsting for more of her. This is the film’s big, gaping writing loophole.

Still, Tamasha harks back to the raw talent that was evident in Imtiaz’s early films, the lovely Socha Na Tha and JWM in particular. Though it may never be possible to forgive him for the extreme misogyny of Cocktail(a film he wrote but did not direct), it is tempting to do so after the genuine warmth and sincerity of Tamasha.

Rating (out of five): ***

PS: Love the fact that some filmmakers are reviving the old Hindi film tradition of writing the title in Urdu too, in addition to English and Hindi.


CBFC Rating (India):
UA
Running time:

144 minutes (as per bookmyshow)
This review has also been published on firstpost:


Photograph courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamasha_(film)


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WHY DOES INDIA NEED A CENSOR BOARD / COLUMN PUBLISHED ON BBC HINDI

November 28, 2015, 12:00 pm
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(This is the English version of an article published on bbc.com/hindi/ on November 28, 2015.)

OUSTING NIHALANI IS NOT ENOUGH, OUST THE CENSOR SYSTEM

There should be no place in a civilised, democratic nation for a statutory body whose job it is to decide what adults can and cannot watch on the big screen?

By Anna MM Vetticad


If Pahlaj Nihalani loses his job as chairperson of India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) – as reports now suggest he will – it should be of limited consolation to filmmakers who have been lamenting his extreme conservatism. After all, his exit does not guarantee an exit of his mindset. The present BJP government at the Centre is unlikely to appoint a liberal to succeed him. Equally important, even a liberal Board chief would be constrained by the long-standing assumption intrinsic to India’s film certification system: that adults don’t know what’s good for them.

To critique the system, it is important to understand how it works. It is mandatory for films to get a CBFC rating before release in India. A film denied a certification cannot be commercially released in theatres. In effect it is banned.

The rating options are as follows:

U – for unrestricted public exhibition.

UA – unrestricted public exhibition subject to parental guidance for those under 12.

A – for adults only.

S – restricted to specialised audiences such as doctors or scientists. 

As you can see, India’s ratings system attributes the same maturity levels across the 12-18 age group. Worse, authorities here can enforce alterations even after giving a film an A rating.
This is in sharp contrast to, say, the US system where producers voluntarily submit their films for ratings – they are not legally required to, but do so anyway because most theatres apparently observe these ratings; the ratings are focused on guiding parents, not curbing adult viewers; and they are far more reflective of maturity levels among minors. They are:
G – General.
PG – Parental Guidance is recommended since the film may contain some material parents may consider inappropriate for their children.
PG-13 – parents are strongly advised to investigate the film before letting under-13s watch it.
R – under-17s not allowed unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.
NC-17 – persons who are 17 and below are not allowed.
On the first rung of the Indian system are examining committees (ECs) at centres across the country that watch, discuss and rate films, typically in one sitting. The CBFC enters the picture when a filmmaker contests an EC ruling. On paper, the CBFC is supposed to consist of eminent persons chosen by the Central Government, and ECs are to be constituted on the CBFC’s advice. In practice, CBFC and EC appointments have been treated by successive governments as political favours.
Nihalani’s selection as CBFC chief has been specifically derided because his embarrassingly low-brow filmography was ignored due to his proximity to the BJP’s parent organisation, RSS. Over the years, ECs too have been packed mostly with people who are not necessarily cinema literate but see themselves as India’s moral guardians. Even the previous CBFC headed by Leela Samson – arguably one of the most liberal Boards the country has seen – was handicapped by conservative ECs.
The difference though is that a liberal Board would empathise with filmmakers’ appeals against unreasonable EC rulings. Empathy or an intelligent understanding of artistic merit can hardly be expected from a producer of Nihalani’s calibre who decided to show that now-infamous, tacky Narendra Modi propaganda video in theatres earlier this month and defended the cutting of kisses in last week’s Bond film, Spectre.
The present Indian system is too arbitrary, too prone to political manipulation, too conservative and too steeped in ignorance of cinema. What the country needs is an independent ratings agency that sees itself as a partner of responsible parents and the film industry. Alternatively, we at least need governments that would be less brazen while picking political appointees. Pahlaj Nihalani is an all-time low.
(Anna MM Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Her Twitter handle is @annavetticad)

BBC Hindi link:
http://www.bbc.com/hindi/india/2015/11/151127_censor_system_anna_pk?ocid=socialflow_twitter

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/SpectreMovie/

Note: This photograph was not sourced from BBC Hindi

Photo caption: Film still showing Bond (Daniel Craig) and Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) in Morocco


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IMTIAZ ALI INTERVIEW / A SHORTER VERSION APPEARED IN MAXIM

November 29, 2015, 3:47 am
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(A shorter version of this interview by Anna MM Vetticad appeared in the February 2014 issue of Maxim magazine)
HEADLINE: “Living in a society in a certain routine, is often a role you impose upon yourself” 
What is it about love and the road that repeatedly draws director Imtiaz Ali? Would one of the country’s most successful creators of romances ever consider making a film about a same-sex couple? And why does he consider rom-coms “artificial” and “chocolatey”? The answers are all in this exclusive interview with the man who gave us Socha Na Tha, Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal.
By Anna M.M. Vetticad

Jab We Metand your latest film Highway are both road movies. What is it about the road that you find so appealing?

What I find appealing about the road is that when you’re travelling, not only is it entertaining because you see new places, but you discover things about yourself that you did not know before. Anyone on a journey becomes a more interesting person to themselves.

In what ways have you become more interesting to yourself when you have been on the road?

I used to get this feeling that sitting on the window seat of a railway train is like watching television, with new things constantly going on. So much of the time you wander away. I used to get this feeling that I’ve wandered away outside the train, into the forest, and become a different person. New thoughts would come. I would have different views. I’d have this feeling that that is who I really am. I would feel like a different person.

But often when we return home after a journey, we describe it as coming back to reality, coming back to the real world. So then could it be that what we discover about ourselves on a journey is an illusion? Are you sure that is the real us?

I often feel that living in a society in a certain routine, in a set pattern of behaviour, is often a role that you impose upon yourself. While playing that role you become that role. You become that guy in office who behaves in a certain way, that guy who lives in a house, in a society, in a colony. You become that person. But when you are out and there is no reference of who you are, no one to remind you of who you are, and you can be anything, in that situation it’s actually easier to be what you’re really meant to be.

What does the romance genre mean to you?

I don’t understand the word “genre”. I don’t even know how to pronounce it. It means nothing to me, and I don’t bother about it. I’m not scholarly as far as cinema is concerned. I’ve not studied much. I’ve not paid attention to categories. I’ve not wanted to make movies that are of any type. I just work on any thought that grabs me, and that’s the movie that comes out. It is later that a genre can be set upon it.  

How then has it come about that all your films have been romances?

That’s a pre-disposition. The kind of stories that have appealed to me are stories about a man and a woman having some sort of a thing together. It’s not as though I do it deliberately.

And why are you pre-disposed to romances?

No idea. I don’t necessarily like watching romantic films. I just like good stories. I don’t even like soft romantic comedies. I’d rather watch an action or horror film. There’s a certain chocolateyness, an artificialness to rom-coms that I find boring.

Are there any romances you have liked that didn’t seem artificial to you?

Many. What rom-coms do is that they have certain set visuals and costume design, a certain foppishness with which they show people, that I don’t like. The romantic films I like, such as Dr Zhivago or Wong Kar Wai’s Chunking Express, are romantic yet real. They are not only occupied with feelings of love but also with other practicalities or situations in life, which then allows me to enjoy the feelings the lead couple have for each other.

Chungking Expressand Dr Zhivago are great films but isn’t it also true that what you are calling real is very melodramatic?

Real life can be far more extraordinary, unusual and unreal than what happens in movies like Dr Zhivago and Chungking Express. And of course a filmmaker or storywriter will pick up a story which is extraordinary, not the usual thing.

Any Indian romances that you found real and believable?

Shyam Benegal’s Junoon issymbolic of my taste in romantic films. I really enjoyed the feeling that they have for each other, but it’s in the real world.

You said that as a filmmaker you tend to think in terms of boy-girl love stories. Would you be open to making boy-boy or girl-girl romances?

Ya sure, why not? I don’t really know that much about it so such stories may not come naturally to me right now, but if I had such a story, I’ll be very happy.

You think the Hindi film industry and the Indian audience are at a stage where they could accept such a story from someone like you, considering that you are not seen as an art-house filmmaker, but as a middle-of-the-road kind of guy?

If it is sensitive, real and enjoyable, if I have a good story, for sure I think they will. You know there’s no such thing as a time for anything new. You’ve got to first do it and then figure it out. People are always going to be ready for it if it’s good.

A lot of gay rights activists feel that Hindi cinema has always mocked and stereotyped homosexual people and never shown gay people as regular people. Is that a fair criticism?

I agree with them. But keep in mind that cinema and communication are progressing in our country. There was a time when Sikhs were only shown as truck drivers, but today they are also mainline heroes in commercial Hindi films like Singh Is Kinng or my own Love Aaj Kal. So the earlier cliché used to be that homosexual people were effeminate, male and behaving like a eunuch. But people are beginning to understand. It only takes one film. Anyway, the movie has to be interesting. We always put it on the people. Will they accept it or not? Arrey, people will accept a film that’s entertaining first.

You mentioned that you tend to draw on your personal experiences while making a film but does that necessarily mean that your films all have autobiographical elements in them?  

Not strictly autobiographical, but there are extensions of thoughts, certain events and personality traits, a sort of an umbilical chord.  

For instance?

When I was younger I used to always think that I wouldn’t be able to make it because I don’t have a tragic life. You found that in the hero of Rockstar. In Jab We Met what is autobiographical is when Geet says, “Ratlam, train se dekha karti thhi yeh gali, yeh ghar. Mujhe lagta thha, pata nahin how will it be to be here. (I used to see Ratlam from the train and wonder how these houses, these streets will be. I used to wonder how it will be to be here.) But today I’m walking on this lane. Wow man!” That kind of thing of looking at something, imagining it and having the fascination of going there some day. Geet also says, “Mujhe yeh sapne aate thhey ki train miss ho jayegi (I used to dream that I would miss my train).” I used to have that. It was a recurring dream that went away after I made Jab We Met.

Because all your films have a love story at their core, do people you meet socially ask you for relationship advice?

They do. But I never kid myself that I have solutions to offer them. I tell them very clearly that although we can talk, they shouldn’t expect that I will know any better than they would. 

What’s the kind of thing people ask you?

People whose lives have something in common with my films will always begin their conversations with that. For instance, a lot of people told me that they had broken up with a girlfriend, but after two years, after watching Love Aaj Kal, they got back with her. Lots of such couples came to meet me and said, “It’s only because of that film that we’re back together now. What is it that we can do to avoid any problem in the future?” I would always say that I don’t know. After watching Rockstarit was, “I don’t know what to think of this guy. He’s not pleasant with me but I don’t think he can get me out of his system and neither can I, so do you think I should fall prey to this kind of desire?” You know that kind of thing. But I’ve never offered any advice because there is a certain responsibility and I can’t misuse this position. If I tell some poor kid some shit just to feel better about myself, they can get into trouble.

Who approaches you more for love advice? Men or women?

More women.

Why do you think that is?

I don’t know. I think men feel hesitant in asking someone who’s also their age. And women are much more comfortable talking about a love or relationship issue than men are.

But how about some advice for Maximreaders in the month of Valentine’s Day? Is there such a thing as the ideal kind of film a guy could take a girl for on a date?

A horror film. For obvious reasons. When you’re watching the film, if she gets scared she’ll hug you. Even after the film the shadows will be creeping up, so she’ll feel protected sticking to you. It’s a good start.

But if she knows already that that’s a trick, then it had better be a damn good horror film for that ploy to work, otherwise she’ll be so self-conscious.

Ya ya, but even if she knows about it, as long as she’s getting scared she doesn’t have any option but to do that.

But what about a romance? Does it make sense too?

Ya, that’s a girl thought. A girl would take a guy to a really intense romantic film on the theme of being together and all of that, then she will get him to feel that way and look at her that way. But the guy is not looking for that kind of thing, especially at the age at which they’re going for dates. (pauses) That’s not true. I’m generalising, but there is that kind of an impression perhaps falsely in society that men are looking physically and women are looking emotionally. I must qualify this by saying this is a myth but generally it’s believed to be true.

Do you find women more romantically inclined towards you as a person because you make romantic films?

(Pauses) I’m not so clear about that. That could be true. (Pauses) You know what, women have this feeling that this guy at least understands. Ya. Could be, yes. I’m not sure about that.

Footnote: I conducted this interview with Imtiaz Ali in January 2014, precisely 22 months before the release of Tamasha which is in theatres just this week. A shorter version was published in Maxim magazine’s Valentine’s Day special in February 2014, which was the same month in which his film Highway (starring Alia Bhatt and Randeep Hooda) was released. I happened to revisit the conversation after writing my review of Tamasha this week and realised that he was perhaps thinking aloud about Ved back then when he responded to my question: Could it be that what we discover about ourselves on a journey is an illusion? I wonder if he was working on Tamasha’s script back then, or it was already done, or it was just an idea in his head. Either way, that’s a question to ask in my next interview.

Related link (Tamasha review):
http://annavetticadgoes2themovies.blogspot.in/2015/11/review-357-tamasha.html


Photographs  courtesy:
(1)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imtiaz_Ali_(director)
(2)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_(2014_Hindi_film)
(3)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jab_We_Met
(4)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(film)
(5)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Express
(6)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamasha_(film)
(7)    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Aaj_Kal

Note: These photographs were not published in Maxim


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REVIEW 358: ANGRY INDIAN GODDESSES

December 5, 2015, 3:34 am
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Release date:
December 4, 2015
Director:
Pan Nalin
Cast:






Language:

Sarah-Jane Dias, Anushka Manchanda, Pavleen Gujral, Sandhya Mridul, Rajshri Deshpande, Amrit Maghera, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Arjun Mathur, Adil Hussain, Anuj Choudhary
Hindi, English


Through years of watching Hindi films, I’ve experienced a lump in my throat each time I’ve listened to Jai and Veeru sing Yeh dosti hum nahin thodenge, invested myself in the gentlemen buddies from Dil Chahta Hai, Rock On, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaraand Kai Po Che, laughed and wept with those 3 idiots. Yet this week’s release, Angry Indian Goddesses, comes as such a joyous relief.

Can it possibly be true? Are we really seeing seven female Indian human beings on the big screen, hanging out together, talking, doubling up with laughter, fighting, crying, partying, sharing secrets and forming new equations?

This is that rare Indian film featuring a group of real women – women who could be you and me – bonding, responding to what life throws at them and living.

Angry Indian Goddesses comes to theatres in the wake of a laughable run-in with India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). Among other things, the Board compelled the director to mute out swear words – even after handing him an A certificate – and the word “sarkar” (government) from a conversation in which the heroines are discussing government interference in the private lives of citizens. Strangest of all though is the directive to blur pictures of Hindu goddesses, although the divine imagery in the film celebrates the strength of its women.

A pity. Because despite an off-putting sell-out through one plot element and an inexcusable instance of factual carelessness, Angry Indian Goddesses is a pathbreaking film filled with humour, realism, tragedy and, ultimately, hope.

The setting is Goa where former magazine photographer Frieda (Sarah-Jane Dias) has invited her best friends from across the country. They are top corporate honcho Suranjana (Sandhya Mridul), musician Madhurita (Anushka Manchanda), Pammi (Pavleen Gujral) who is a housewife, the activist Nargis (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and Freida’s half-Indian cousin, Bollywood aspirant Joanna (Amrit Maghera). Suranjana is accompanied by her little daughter. The group’s constant companion is Freida’s housemaid Lakshmi (Rajshri Deshpande).

Right from the opening montage of the women before they gather at Freida’s home, it is clear that this film will be feisty, fiery and funny, all rolled into one – just like its leading ladies.

The pace of those initial scenes, the deliberately raised decibel levels, the blistering anger of the protagonists, the comedy that is inherent in many of life’s bizarrely appalling situations and a touch of hyperbole are all woven together in a flawlessly edited, disturbing yet hilarious few minutes. Though this mosaic is a contrast to the understated nature of the rest of the film, its flaming fury still manages to set the tone for what is to come.

Gujarat-born, Paris-and-Mumbai-based writer-director Pan Nalin has adopted a naturalistic style for the rest of his narrative. Along with his co-writers Dilip Shankar, Subhadra Mahajan and Arsala Qureishi, he has also ensured that his characters are credible and speak a language that real people speak. The film begins with endless natter among the women as they bond over their many painful and amusing experiences, before a calamity freezes the smiles on their lips.

The cast is talented and uniformly relaxed before the camera. Hats off to the casting director (Dilip Shankar again) for seeing in former beauty queen Sarah-Jane Dias something more than the gorgeousness that was the sole focus of her first Hindi film role, in 2011’s deadbeat Game. She is a revelation here. Pavleen Gujral and theatre artiste Rajshri Deshpande are both blazing balls of fire. Singer Anushka Manchanda – long legs, striking face and familiar husky voice in tow – delivers a nuanced performance. And the ever-dependable Sandhya Mridul is brilliant.

Since violence – verbal and/or physical – is an intrinsic part of every woman’s life, it goes without saying that our leading ladies are no different. In the past, when Indian cinema has addressed violence against women, it has usually turned the spotlight entirely on the aggression rather than on the women coping with it.

Likewise, films in the past have often adopted an impractical, undesirable recommendatory tone towards women responding to brutality with premeditated brutality. Cases in point: Zakhmi Aurat in Hindi (1988) and 22 Female Kottayam in Malayalam (2012).

Angry Indian Goddesses does not do either of the above. At no point does it define its heroines solely by the difficulties they encounter as women. In fact the dominant memory from the film is of their constant chatter, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes ruminative, sometimes grave. When they do suffer assault and one of them explodes, the treatment of the explosion gives it a far more credible feel than a plot summary might suggest.

In a cinematic scenario where most films are made with an eye on the male audience, it is an act of valour to make one which insists on being entertaining notwithstanding its grim elements, rather than issue-based, which is what women-centric films are expected to be. Since Angry Indian Goddesses sticks its neck out thus, it is particularly disappointing to spot its big sell-out.

Spoilers Ahead In The Next Three Paragraphs:

At one point in the story, we are introduced to an Indian lesbian couple – one a Muslim NGO type, the other a Christian artistic type. The choice of profession serves to perpetuate a prevailing stereotype that homosexuality exists only among certain classes of people in certain fields (you know, like the “all fashion designers are gay” assumption some people make?), while the choice of religion suggests a play-it-safe strategy considering the violence with which fundamentalists targeted Deepa Mehta’s Fire back in 1998 for portraying two Hindu women as lesbians.

The CBFC got the name of a lead character in Fire changed from Sita to Nita. Still, theatres showing the film were attacked by communalists. A seemingly pre-emptive effort to placate such forces is unexpected from Nalin whose 2001film Samsara had the courage to be critical of Buddha on behalf of his wife Yashodhara.

This has also led to a gaping loophole in the film: a Catholic priest agrees to get two women married in the story. Fact: the Roman Catholic Church is officially against homosexuality. Even with the present Pope making conciliatory gestures towards the LGBT community, the RC Church in India remains adamant about its position. While there may well be individual Indian priests who are liberals in this matter, the passing mention in this film does not in any way let on that this particular priest must be a mega-rebel who could be thrown out of the Church for his actions. Was this casualness towards facts a bow to the prevailing situation in India where majoritarian groups are aiming at thought control?

Yes seems to be the only plausible answer since it is hard to attribute any of this to lack of awareness from such a well-travelled, experienced filmmaker. This is disheartening, considering the immense bravery Nalin has shown in every other aspect of this film.

It is this bravery that makes Angry Indian Goddessessignificant despite its flaws, its climactic song in a church – more melodramatic than the conversational tone of the rest of the film – and an unnecessary epilogue featuring a man mourning the loss of a lover he never had. The film made me wonder at its female leads’ ability to laugh – out loud and a lot – in spite of the crap life doles out to them, a large part of it because of their gender. It got me asking: Why are women not angrier with the world? What a pleasant change it is for an Indian film to raise such a question. And what a pleasant change to see a female dostifilm.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):

A
Running time:
121 minutes

This review has also been published on first post: 

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/AIGtheFilm/
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REVIEW 359: HATE STORY 3

December 7, 2015, 3:14 am
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Release date:
December 4, 2015
Director:
Vishal Pandya
Cast:


Language:

Sharman Joshi, Zareen Khan, Karan Singh Grover, Daisy Shah, Priyanshu Chatterjee
Hindi


In a week that has brought to Indian theatres the film Angry Indian Goddesses with every swear word uttered by its characters muted out on the orders of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), there also comes Hate Story 3. Not only do people in this film use the F-word and its variants seven times (I counted) – “fucking idiot”, “who the fuck are you?”, “I’m not a fucking coward” etc – without being muted or beeped out, they simulate sex repeatedly and do a bad job of it.

Truth be told, Hate Story 3 might help you finally understand a phraseoften used by religious fanatics and self-appointed guardians of “Bharatiya sanskriti”. Because the bad sex, poor production values and awful acting in the film have truly “hurt my (quality-loving) sentiments”.

The HateStory series has featured three basic ingredients in each film: a revenge story + sex scenes set to long, very long songs + tackiness. This one is no different.

Aditya Diwan (Sharman Joshi) is a wealthy Mumbai-based industrialist married to a woman in revealing outfits called Siya (Zareen Khan, she who made her debut with Salman Khan in Veer). One day Aditya receives an indecent proposal from fellow m/billionaire Saurav Singhania (TV’s Karan Singh Grover), as he surveys the world on a laughably obvious digitally created terrace of a high-rise building. The proposal is this: I’ll give you as much money as you want if you will give me ek raat (one night) with your wife.

Imagine going downhill from Veer, a film that even Salman acknowledges was lousy. That’s Zareen’s fate in Bollywood, though it’s hard to sympathise with her as you suffer her sorry attempts at acting.

So anyway, back to the story…

A furious Aditya storms off, only to discover that Saurav is determined to destroy his business empire unless he gets that ek raat.

Siya, genius that she is, points out that there has to be more to Saurav’s demand than meets the eye, and we can’t help but agree since she is so dull, dull, dull that it’s impossible to believe a hottie like Saurav would go to such lengths to get her into bed, even though she is in possession of goraapan, that milky white skin that Indian men so desire.  

For the record, Saurav’s hotness is limited to his prettiness and the ripped muscles of his torso. The muscles on his face are a different cup of weak tea altogether – they seem incapable of motion.

In this race for the year’s Worst Actor trophy, there enters another strong contender: Daisy Shah, she who made her Bollywood debut opposite Salman Khan (good lord, where does he find ’em?) in last year’s Jai Ho. Daisy plays the large and buxom Kaya Sharma, loyal lieutenant to Aditya. Kaya is the kind of female Indian corporate bigwig you find only in commercial cinema: prone to wearing very very tight skirts to office meetings and microscopically tiny outfits to business meetings, with layers and layers of thick makeup on her face.

Aditya, Sia and Kaya hatch a plot to discover Saurav’s motivations, which the director then weaves around the film’s bad sex scenes.

It’s better to watch pornography than such theatrical fake sex featuring actresses in leopard-spotted lingerie, who sing while wrapping their long legs around their male partners or mount the man’s crotch and appear to be orgasming but never seem to take off their bras (because that– i.e. bra removal – is unacceptable to our CBFC).

In the midst of all this stands that oasis called Sharman Joshi, proof of how tough this film industry can be even if you are sweet-looking, likeable and a good actor. Sharman, perhaps you owe us nothing, but the next time you are considering a film like this one, do spare a thought for those of us who still believe in you? Please?

Hate Story 1 at least did its sex better, even if its weak leading lady did not possess the panache required for the bombastic lines given to her. Hate Story 2 at least had some interesting moments involving actor Sushant Singh as the villain and a believable, rebellious twist in the end involving an important female character.

Both were terrible films but at least they were not absolute zeroes. Hate Story 3 adds up to zilch.

If there is anything I’ve said so far that might for a moment suggest that this film has ANY redeeming factors, let me say it loud and clear here: it does not.

Unless of course you want to have some laughs at songs with lyrics that go thus:

Give me give me give me love and give me more
Thoda sa mujhse love le bhi aao
My lover gave you dounce and I feelin’ low
Again and again and again

What’s danger, what danger, what danger
Take me down, down, down, down
What danger, what danger, what danger
Take me down, down, down, down

Take me down, down, down, down
Take me down, down, down, down

Aaj dikhade mujhe love karke
Oh baby, baahon mein bharke
Oh, jo bhi socha sapnon mein
Woh aaj dikhade mujhe sab karke (to be sung twice).

I rewatched the video of this song, Tu isaq mera, online because I thought perhaps I had misheard the lyrics in the hall. I then visited lyrics.com and found that they had heard pretty much what I did.

I’m not sure what “dounce” means, but “this filmmaker gave us dounce and I feelin’ low” kind of sounds like an apt description of my emotions towards this film.

CBFC Rating (India):
A
Running time:
132 minutes

This review has also been published on firstpost:
http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/hate-story-3-review-a-terrible-film-with-zero-redeeming-factors-2536014.html

Photograph courtesy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_Story_3 
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