REVIEW 29: MEMORIES IN MARCH

Release date:	April 1, 2011
Director:	Sanjoy Nag
Cast:	Deepti Naval, Rituparno Ghosh, Raima Sen

The producers of Memories in March must be made answerable for why they would support a gutsy project such as this one and then not bother to promote it. How many of you were aware of this film’s existence before you saw this review? And then, if it fails at the box-office, what will we hear? That Indian audiences are not interested in anything except masala or that Indians are uncomfortable with films featuring central characters who are gay. That’s so unfair – Indian audiences are not to blame if you make a sweet little film and then don’t bother to spread the word about it!

Memories in March is the story of a mother re-discovering her son after he passes away. Arati Mishra (Deepti Naval) flies to Kolkata from Delhi when she receives the news of Siddharth’s death in a car accident. Sid was a young, bright, up-and-coming executive in an ad agency whose life is cut short by one night of drunken driving. The film remains with Arati during her three days in Kolkata where she stays at Siddharth’s flat, visits his office, meets his colleague Sahana Choudhury (Raima Sen) and his boss Ornob Mitra (Rituparno Ghosh). Through them she realises that she didn’t, after all, know everything about the child she loved so much.

So when a mother learns that her late son was gay, what’s worse in her eyes: the loss of the boy or the loss of her image of what he was? Naval brings a remarkable maturity and restraint to the role of a parent who is clearly uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality and yet can’t be harshly labelled as a homophobe. That’s the wonderful thing about director Sanjoy Nag’s handling of the subject and Rituparno Ghosh’s writing: at no point is Memories judgmental about Arati though that could have been a temptation since the film takes a sympathetic view of a homosexual person’s fear of coming out to his family. Yes Arati does call it an “abnormality”, and yes she does accuse her son’s lover of seducing him, but is her reaction any different from what you might expect of any city-bred, 50-plus Indian mom who has never been exposed to alternate sexualities? So is Arati prejudiced or innocent? Witness her artless reaction to the discovery of a packet of condoms among her son’s belongings: if he used birth control, then he certainly couldn’t be gay, she concludes. That is one of the many heart-warming scenes in this film.

I’m not saying much more about the story here for fear of giving away details that it would be nice for you to chance upon yourself. All I will say is that it’s lovely to watch Arati’s transition from her initial revulsion to reluctant acceptance of Siddharth’s reality. Rituparno Ghosh enriches that journey with his uncannily real portrayal of Siddharth’s gay boss. Ornob’s physicality fits many of the stereotypes that exist in our minds of what a gay person would be and yet, he is not a caricature. As the female colleague who harboured feelings for Siddharth, Raima Sen chips in a very natural performance. I have no idea why this girl has not made it big in films – she’s beautiful and talented and a joy to watch.  

Memories in March is about a mother-son bond, about homosexuality, about how that office for which we neglect our family will give away our cubicles in a jiffy while we remain irreplaceable in the lives of the very family we neglected for work. But most of all, the film is part of an interesting expedition that Indian cinema has embarked upon in its exploration of homosexuality as a theme: it’s not the first, and hopefully won’t be the last, but it’s certainly one of the best. Onir’s My Brother Nikhil was a simple and beautiful film about a gay man battling HIV and social opprobrium. More commercial films like Kal Ho Na Ho and Dostana too have their place in easing mainstream, conservative Indian audiences into the idea of homosexuality. Those who were offended by these two films should consider the obscene amount of bigotry that was packed into Karan Razdan’s Girlfriend, to understand the difference between laughing at someone and laughing affectionately with someone.

About a decade back, the late Nishit Saran had made a film called Summer in my Veins which was a feature-length home video about the moment he came out to his mother. It was moving no doubt, and pathbreaking, but one thing that defied believability in the film (at least for me) is the ease with which Nishit’s mother accepted the information. “Mom I’m gay,” was met with equanimity and an unblinking okay. In that sense, Memories in March feels more real.

Perhaps this film could have done without the lengthy discussion about fish being caged in an aquarium. And I certainly don’t understand why costs had to be cut by superimposing a car against footage of a busy road passing by – that looked tacky. But when you look at the larger picture, these feel like minor quibbles. Memories in March has some lovely music to back the story, but what moved me much more than the voices of professional singers in the background was watching Arati sing Yeh raatein yeh mausam nadi ka kinara yeh chanchal hawa in a borderline tuneless voice when Ornob tries to recall the song that Siddharth loved so much. Like so much else in this film, the scene was funny, it was sweet, it made me smile, it made me cry, and it was totally worth my time.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U / A
Running time:	106 Minutes
Language:	English, Hindi and a bit of Bengali with subtitles running throughout

 

Photograph courtesy: http://passionforcinema.com/memories-in-march-firstdayfirstshow-on-dingora/

REVIEW 25: MONICA

Release date:	March 25, 2011
Director:	Sushen Bhatnagar
Cast:	Divya Dutta, Ashutosh Rana, Rajit Kapoor, Kitu Gidwani

This seems to be a week of films that must have looked good on paper. Monica is the story of a girl from Little Lucknow who moves to Big Bad Delhi and becomes more involved than any journalist should in the world that she’s covering as a reporter. Monica Jaitley has an affair with a powerful politician, gets too close to her sources and is ultimately murdered.

The film begins with promise. Divya Dutta comes across as very real while playing a wannabe who allows her ambitions to get ahead of her. And Ashutosh Rana shines as the politico with gray shades. He’s not all bad or all good: he’s a blend of both, which is such a rarity among Hindi film ‘villains’, so a pat on the back for the writer too. But two good performances, one well-developed character and a few other plus points can’t carry a film through.

The greatest flaw in Monica is that it shows a limited understanding of the media. Yes, there is no doubt that there are too many journalists around who are intoxicated by the false sense of power that the job can bring. So yes, the director is spot-on on that front. But it’s the little things that irritate. Firstly, how about having checked with the HR departments of major media organisations about their salary scales? Junior print journalists are not a lavishly paid lot and yet, Monica the rising scribe (whose husband, we are told, is still struggling) is shown living in a sizeable flat in Delhi that houses a spacious granite-laden bathroom with a roomy Jacuzzi. At that point in the story she has not yet been drawn into the corrupt system, so do tell me where the money came from? An editor in the film lambasts Monica for being ungrateful to him when it is he who elevated her from the post of a mere “sub reporter” to a special correspondent. What the heck is a “sub reporter”? Either he meant “cub reporter” (an informal term used to describe newcomers on the job) or a “sub-editor”. But clearly, the team of Monica hadn’t done enough research to know the difference. The least they could have done was consult Peepli Live’s Anusha Rizvi who is one of the few directors in the history of Bollywood to have got the workings of an Indian newsroom right.

What’s also wrong with Monica are the many insinuations that it makes despite being a work of fiction. The film’s pre-release publicity suggests that the story is at least partially inspired by the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar. There can and should be no half measures in such matters. If Monica Jaitley in this film is the late Shivani Bhatnagar of real life, then won’t the public infer that the drunken, insecure, unsuccessful Mr Jaitley of the film is the real-life Mr Bhatnagar? Isn’t that insensitive and irresponsible considering that viewers may draw conclusions about Shivani’s family after watching this film?

Add to this the loopholes in the script, the fuzzy characterisation of the leading lady, a story that becomes terribly confusing after a point as it goes back and forth between flashbacks, and some surprisingly bad acting by the usually dependable Rajit Kapoor as Monica’s husband, and you know why there’s as little hope for this film as there is for the protagonist who digs her own grave. We witness Monica’s dramatic transformation from a diffident small-town girl in saris to a bold, hyper-Westernised, cleavage-flashing, chain-smoking, unscrupulous big-city journalist – I’m not saying this is implausible, but I wonder why we are never given the reason for this metamorphosis. Monica’s first decision to sleep with politician Chandrakant Pandit (Ashutosh Rana) is not opportunistic but emotional. But we are never given to understand when, why or how arrogance and promiscuity set in. When she sleeps with a powerful female industrialist (Kitu Gidwani) it’s unclear whether she is genuinely leaning on another woman for support or was a closet lesbian/bisexual all those years or was merely cashing in on the older woman’s attraction towards her.

But in that unexpected dalliance, I still find something to praise in Monica. Homosexuality is usually caricatured – and male – in Hindi films. Fire starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das was a rarity. More recently came Karan Razdan’s ridiculously bad Girlfriend. After seeing Ishaa Koppikkar and Amrita Arora hook up in that film, I must say I felt some trepidation at the prospect of icky, vulgar or laughable shots of two women between the sheets when I heard of a lesbian angle in Monica. But kudos to director Sushen Bhatnagar for shooting Divya Dutta and Kitu Gidwani in bed without making any crude effort to titillate. Wish the rest of the film had been just as deftly handled.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	120 Minutes
Language:	Hindi