REVIEW 272: GRACE OF MONACO

Release date (India):	June 13, 2014
Director:	Olivier Dahan
Cast: Language:	Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Frank Langella, Milo Ventimiglia English

Grace of Monaco has enough palace intrigue and political machinations, sumptuous dresses and luscious scenery, twists, turns and spectacle to keep it engaging. The problem is that these elements are repeatedly overshadowed by the film’s effort to be a hagiography rather than a biography, and its greatly exaggerated notion of its heroine’s significance in world history. Unfortunate, because Olivier Dahan’s biopic of the film-star-turned-royal (co-produced by Bollywood major Yash Raj Films’ YRF Entertainment) is not without merit.

Imagine the media frenzy back in 1956 when a 27-year-old American beauty, a young Oscar winner with a handful of films in her CV, appeared to turn her back on it all to marry the ruler of the tiny principality of Monaco in Europe; when Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III to become Princess Grace of Monaco. It was dubbed “the wedding of the century”, the sort of event that people tend to describe as “the stuff that fairytales are made of”.

People forget the regressive, patriarchal connotations of that description though, and its unsuitability to Grace anyway. Fictional fairytales usually have a prince “rescuing” a princess from something or someone; his kiss and/or marriage to him being her salvation. Do all women need metaphorical “rescuing” by a man? More to the point, did Grace – a star in her own right and child of wealthy parents – need “rescuing”? The saving grace of those old fairytales has been that the storybook prince and princess always marry for love. From accounts of the lives of Grace and Rainier though, contradicted but then corroborated in passing in this film, their marriage was more of a practical arrangement at least from Rainier’s point of view.

Back to the film… Irritation sets in when we first encounter Nicole Kidman playing Grace. Kidman’s back is shown bidding farewell to colleagues on a film set in an elongated scene of slow motion set to an operatic background score. The melodramatic presentation returns when Grace feels a friend is abandoning her in Monaco; then again one evening as she meets her subjects before a royal banquet; and once again in a closing montage. These scenes along with numerous too-close close-ups of Kidman are clearly designed to heighten our sense of Grace’s stature. Whatever the makers of this film may think though, Grace Kelly is no Meryl Streep, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa or Indira Gandhi in terms of achievement or her place in history. Despite the romantic aura around the “actress-turned-princess” label, she is at best an equivalent of Diana or Jackie Kennedy, though Monaco is neither Britain nor America.

The story of the film takes off when the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock drops in to visit Grace in Monaco and offer her the lead role in his film Marnie. It takes us from there to the controversy the offer generates among her subjects, Grace’s tense relationship with her dictatorial and workaholic husband, and her struggle to win over the press, all set against the backdrop of a tussle between Rainier (Tim Roth) and President Charles de Gaulle of France.

Some parts of the story are recorded in the media, some are private and we can never be sure of their authenticity (Grace and Rainier’s son, the current Prince, has officially lambasted this film for its unflattering depiction of his father). Whatever be the truth, Grace of Monaco is interesting when it is not wallowing in its own sense of self-importance, when instead it is narrating the story of a one-time career woman feeling suffocated in her new role as a glorified housewife, the struggles of a foreigner trying to fit in, and the politics of the palace. While Grace and Rainier are at loggerheads, the film works because it is easy to relate to her frustration. But the chemistry between Kidman and Roth is so cold, that when Rainier asks at one point, “Why are you still here Grace?” it’s hard to believe her answer: “Because we have children together. And because I still love you.” She loves him? Really? I didn’t feel that.

The one time the film’s soundtrack works is when the opera moves from the background to the foreground, in a banquet scene featuring a lovely live performance. Grace Of Monaco is also a visual delight at every level, from the heroine’s statuesque beauty to her wardrobe and the settings. Kidman as Grace is stunning to look at. She is too self-conscious in scenes where she’s asked to pose around, but in the rest of the film she does manage to draw us into her tense and troubled little world. Roth as Rainier is a bore.

Arash Amel’s script is clear in its perspective that Monaco is not the centre of the universe, and that its position as a sovereign city-state is tenuous. Amel’s mistake is that he allows Rainier’s clash with de Gaulle – over Monaco’s status as a haven for French tax evaders – to eclipse his clashes with his wife. Considering that it’s hardly an honourable cause, the film’s effort to ennoble Grace’s support for Rainier in this squabble is laughable.

If only Amel had remained focused on why the heck Grace and Rainier married, and why the heck she stuck around, this could have been a better film. I enjoyed those parts that portrayed Grace as a real woman like you and me. It’s intriguing to note that over half a century after this story is set, the same damned question is still being thrust in our faces: can a woman be a wife and mother, and have a career too? Now that is what this film should have been all about.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	103 minutes

Poster courtesy: Yash Raj Films

REVIEW 271: FUGLY

Release date:	June 13, 2014
Director:	Kabir Sadanand
Cast: Language:	Mohit Marwah, Kiara Advani, Vijender Singh, Arfi Lamba, Jimmy Sheirgill, Anshuman Jha Hindi

Fugly is a well-intentioned film that suffers from weak direction, lack of focus and overly melodramatic, over-used music. It’s the story of four carefree young chaddi buddies – Dev (Mohit Marwah), Devi (Kiara Advani), Gaurav (Vijender Singh) and Aditya (Arfi Lamba). They spend their days and nights hanging out together, figuring out their career plans, and getting away with their occasional misbehaviour because Gaurav’s dad is a powerful politician. One day a creepy fellow molests Devi, and the friends’ revenge scheme goes horribly wrong when they are caught by that rare cop who is unimpressed by their neta connection. That’s when life spirals out of control, as does the film.

It’s clear right from the start that Fugly is trying to achieve a certain mellow, thoughtful tone. The going’s okay early on especially considering that Mohit and Kiara are easy on the eye, and the DoP treats us to some expansive, breathtaking shots of Leh. Pretty soon though, it gets boring. The writer skips from one focal point to the next to the next, making it hard to figure out what the film is trying to say. Only one thing is clear: it’s trying to say something. Towards the beginning it seems like Fugly might be a coming-of-age film revolving around this quartet of 20-somethings. But no it’s not that. Later it feels like perhaps it will be about society’s response to the everydayness of sexual violence in India. Nope, it’s not that either. Then you think it’s about the all-pervasive corruption in Indian society. Not that either. And then I just stopped caring.

Sadly for the cast, three of them deserve better. I’ll give you till the end of this paragraph to guess who the fourth is. Arfi Lamba is a talented chap who played Chandan Roy Sanyal’s troubled friend just last year in Ashish R. Shukla’s lovely yet unheralded film Prague. Debutants Mohit (veteran actor Anil Kapoor’s nephew) and Kiara reveal flashes of potential and large doses of sex appeal. Unfortunately, all three are handicapped by poor writing.

Real-life boxing champ Vijender Singh is a different story though. Not every attractive sportsperson can emote before a camera. In Fugly, Vijender’s face is so immobile that he makes Katrina Kaif look like a National Award-worthy actress.

Playing the corrupt policeman R.S. Chautala, the usually dependable Jimmy Sheirgill tries hard to appear menacing as the four youngsters battle his character. Sheirgill’s own battle here is with the sketchy writing of his character. It’s hard to believe this film is produced by the same Grazing Goat Pictures that had the vision to back the script of 2012’s pathbreaking, revolutionarily gutsy OMG Oh My God!

Some films are so bad they leave you angry. Fugly is just too tepid to incite that kind of passion. This is truly unfortunate because in those scenes where Devi is shown dealing with the sort of sexual harassment that Indian women have to face in daily life – at the workplace, at parties, everywhere, anywhere – and the consequences of her protest, the film does manage to be strikingly true-to-life. There are serious Hindi films that have dealt sensitively with the issue of rape, but other forms of sexual violence have rarely been touched upon effectively. Fugly has one particularly poignant scene in which Devi is chided for having made an issue out of a man running his hand over her bottom. “He just touched your ass, he didn’t rape you, did he?” she is asked crudely. The scene is a stark reminder of how women across the world, but especially in this country, are often expected to build up their tolerance levels and accept at least a certain amount of sexual harassment as an inevitability. It also illustrates the reason why millions of women don’t complain about such behaviour. Wish director Kabir Sadanand and team had stuck to this chain of thought. They did not. Instead, the film meanders endlessly and tries to be about too many things, leaving us with no answer to the question that’s been repeated in its theme song running relentlessly on TV channels for what seems like weeks now: seriously, “yeh Fugly Fugly kya hai?”

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	135 minutes

Poster courtesy: Everymedia PR

REVIEW 270: HOW OLD ARE YOU

Release date:	May 17, 2014
Director:	Rosshan Andrrews
Cast: Language:	Manju Warrier, Kunchacko Boban, Amritha Anil, Muthumani, Kanika, Lalu Alex, Siddhartha Basu in a guest appearance as the President of India Malayalam

Who decides the expiry date of a woman’s dreams? With this basic question, Nirupama Rajeev unwittingly sets in motion a mini revolution, not just in her own life but also across her home state Kerala. Not in reality, but in this story. How Old Are You marks the return to the big screen of the much-loved Malayalam film star Manju Warrier after a hiatus of a decade and a half. For that reason alone, it is a milestone for film buffs. For women across the country, it’s a different sort of milestone, asking uncomfortable questions about gender equality in situations that don’t involve extreme crimes or extreme poverty, and doing so in an entertaining yet realistic fashion.

How Old Are You revolves around Nirupama (Manju) who allowed her career ambitions to take a backseat in favour of marriage and motherhood. She was an outstanding student but now works in a run-of-the-mill sarkari clerical job, focusing all her energies on home management and the upbringing of her daughter. Having just turned 36, she is dreading the approaching 40.

We all know women like Nirupama, bright, energetic, brimming with potential yet having let go of the outside world for so long that they’ve lost their confidence. Hers has been further eroded by her husband Rajeev who scorns her work at home and the office, disparages her for her limited interests and for not being smart enough. Nirupama’s daughter too does not value her.

Like Sridevi’s character Shashi Godbole in 2012’s Bollywood film English Vinglish, though in a vastly different context and circumstances, Nirupama too rediscovers herself and recovers her self-respect during the course of this film. She goes many steps further than Shashi though, finding unprecedented career opportunities once she has shrugged off her insecurities.

Manju is so natural as Nirupama that it’s hard to believe she’s been away from the arclights for this long. Her large expressive eyes convey joy, hurt, diffidence and determination seemingly effortlessly. Her good looks and trim physique are enhanced by costumier Sameera Saneesh’s stunning albeit simple saris and Renjith Ambady’s minimalist makeup. Kudos too to DoP R. Diwakaran for the way he captures her lovely face without being overwhelmed by her beauty.

It takes courage for a male star to take on the role of Rajeev because the character is so hard to like. Kunchacko Boban takes the risk and lives up to the task. It’s interesting to see him subtly conveying his journey during the film, from condescension towards his wife to the gradual realisation that this newly confident woman doesn’t need him as much as he needs her.

Other members of this talented cast who deserve a mention are Muthumani as Nirupama’s colleague (what a striking screen presence!) and Amritha Anil as the daughter. The only one who doesn’t fit the picture is Kanika, playing Nirupama’s former classmate Susan, now a corporate hotshot who reminds her of the great expectations everyone had of her back in college. Kanika has a studied style of dialogue delivery. Worse, Sameera Saneesh fits her out in skirt suits that don’t suit her personality, possibly under the mistaken impression that the skirt is the outfit of choice for successful women in corporate India. It’s not.

Let’s be very clear – director Rosshan Andrrews and writers Bobby & Sanjay don’t at any point equate being a housewife with being unsuccessful. This is a film about not subordinating your desires before anyone or anything, and refusing to live with regret if your choices lie beyond the four walls of a house or a boring 9-to-5 job that your family may find convenient but that fails to exploit your talent. In fact How Old Are You bravely takes a stance that even many feminists may find discomfiting. Society tends to glorify women who choose home over offices. Feminists who are tired of such women being taken for granted by their families, over-compensate by placing them on an even higher pedestal. Don’t give me excuses, Susan tells Nirupama, other women have got married and had children without giving up their professional dreams. Ergo, if your dreams are not limited to home-making alone, then don’t make your home your excuse.

In fact, the only point where the film seems to defy believability is in Nirupama’s decisions regarding her husband towards the end. This is a woman who has begun to see him with such clarity as a man who has shamelessly treated her as a doormat, that she asks him at one point whether he’d have kept her with him if servants weren’t too expensive. Ultimately though, the film plays it safe with their relationship in ways I will not describe, possibly because the rest of it is so bold that it didn’t want to shake up the audience too much. Well, if that’s what it wanted to do, then that bit needed to be written more effectively. In that regard, I feel that Shashi’s final equation with her husband in English Vinglish was better handled.

I watched How Old Are You in a hall in Delhi, surrounded by an audience that seemed to be enjoying it, though I did catch the voices of a few gentlemen sounding decidedly uncomfortable with this woman Nirupama so openly defying her husband. It’s such a pain to have your boat rocked, no? Well, How Old Are You is no doubt the story of a woman rocking the boat, but open-minded menfolk could find their own lives reflected in the way Nirupama had let go of herself. This is a well-acted, well-produced film conveying a crucial message without being preachy. It’s a refreshing change for another reason too: like India’s largest film industries Bollywood, Kollywood and Tollywood, Malayalam cinema too is guilty of relegating women to a secondary role and writing off actresses at a far younger age than their male colleagues. In that context, it’s a joy to see the comeback of an actress in her mid-30s, that too in a film where the protagonist is a 36-year-old woman. Bravo Manju Warrier, Rosshan Andrrews and the rest of the team. Bravo!

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	141 minutes

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/HowOldAreYou/photos_stream