AGEIST BIASES AGAINST ACTRESSES / FILM FATALE: COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

TOO OLD TO BE SEEN WITH?

Age remains a dirty word for women in commercial cinema worldwide, despite occasional flashes of liberalism

By Anna M.M. Vetticad

In an ideal world, being a Bond ‘girl’ would not be seen as a fillip to the filmography of an established, talented actress. This is not an ideal world though. Today’s reality is that mass-targeted cinema is still largely focused on male characters and while age is not a disadvantage for major male stars, even the fittest of fine actresses are sidelined much earlier in their lives than men.

In this scenario, the next James Bond film Spectre and Dil Dhadakne Do (DDD) merit a discussion. Hollywood sprung a surprise on us just months back with the announcement that Monica Bellucci will play Bond’s romantic interest in Spectre. At 50, Bellucci is the oldest actress to get that role, according to Western media reports, and she is even four years older than her co-star Daniel Craig, which would not be news-worthy information but for the fact that a premium is placed on female youth in glamour industries worldwide.

Here in India, it should not have made news that Bollywood star Anil Kapoor was playing a grey-haired, 50-plus father of grown-up children in DDD. But it did, because senior male actors in India tend to play characters much younger than their real age. While Kapoor deserves the kudos he is getting for evolving beyond that, it’s telling that nary a whimper has been raised about the casting of a much younger Shefali Shah as his wife.

Because Team DDD seems to be a progressive lot, it is more important than ever to ask: was no actress of Kapoor’s age found suitable for that role?

Allow me to get briefly literal and mathematical to illustrate my point. Shah is 42 and Kapoor is 58, according to various online sources. In the film, they are parents to a girl and boy played by 32-year-old Priyanka Chopra and 29-year-old Ranveer Singh. If Shah was really their mother off screen, she would have been 10 at her daughter’s birth and 13 when her son was born. Biologically you know that’s a stretch, legally of course this would mean kids born out of wedlock or in a child marriage. You could have dismissed these calculations as fussy and silly if it weren’t for the fact that the screenplay writer is clearly not oblivious to this matter and makes a subtle effort to justify the casting by pointedly assigning the following ages to the four principal characters: Dad 52, Mum 48, kids mid-20s.

When reports earlier emerged that 48-year-old Madhuri Dixit-Nene and 51-year-old Sridevi had turned down Shah’s role, the media was critical of them. The two “got queasy” and Shah “has taken up the challenge”, said a report in a leading national daily. A dear film critic friend is of the view that “Madhuri was being un-adventurous” with her decision. But no one has asked if any Bollywood director would have dared to offer the role of Priyanka and Ranveer’s father to John Abraham (who is the same age as Shah), Akshay Kumar (who is less than a year younger than Dixit-Nene) or the three Khans who all hit 50 this year.

Longevity for female stars is not a favour being granted to them, but every major film industry in the world is guilty on this front, though some are worse than others.

In India, not only are older actresses given limited roles by producers and writers, but older heroes want to romance heroines young enough to be their daughters. It’s as if actresses their age are not worth being seen or worth being seen with.

In his last three films, Tamil legend Rajinikanth has starred opposite Sonakshi Sinha, who is 36 years his junior, Anushka Shetty (31 years younger), Deepika Padukone (age gap: 35 years) and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (age gap: 23 years).

In interviews I’ve done with them over the years, both Kamal Haasan and Salman Khan insisted they are merely giving in to audience demands by acting with younger heroines. But how can you claim viewers have made a choice, when you almost never give them that choice? And if the audience does indeed make a regressive choice, could you at least have the courage to claim helplessness rather than endorse their illiberal view?

Unlike several Hollywood heavyweights, Indian actresses have rarely been critical of this phenomenon, partly because not every woman is convinced of the need for gender justice, but mostly because it is risky for them to question the status quo in their respective male-dominated industries (which are, let’s admit it, even worse than Hollywood).

Not that gentleman feminists have it easy. It has been four years since Prithviraj Sukumaran, then 29, gave an interview to Asianet in which he bravely called on his senior colleagues in the Malayalam film industry, Mohanlal and Mammooty, to “start playing their age”. Fans of both stars, gender chauvinists and status-quo-ists are still skewering him for the comments.

Speaking up is always a lonely business at first. It is time more men and women slammed film industries worldwide for turning age into a dirty word for actresses but a badge of honour for men. No, it is not a big deal that a 50-year-old woman will romance Bond. And no, Madhuri was not being “un-adventurous” by rejecting DDD; she was simply doing what any sensible male star of her stature and age would do.

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

(This column by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on June 20, 2015)

Original link: 

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/watch/too-old-to-be-seen-with/article7329772.ece

Photograph courtesy: (1) Spectre – Sony Pictures Entertainment (2) Dil Dhadakne Do – https://www.facebook.com/DDDTheFilm

Note: This photograph was not sourced from The Hindu Businessline

REVIEW 336: ABCD 2 (ANY BODY CAN DANCE 2) (3D)

Release date:	June 19, 2015
Director:	Remo D’souza
Cast: Language:	Prabhudheva, Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Lauren Gottlieb, Raghav Juyal, Sushant Pujari Hindi

The first half of Any Body Can Dance (ABCD) 2 seems to be precisely what it set out to be: a tribute to musicals of the Broadway and West End – not Bollywood – style, meaning: a very slim yet not insubstantial story woven through a series of great dance routines. No better introduction is needed to the intended promise of this film than that superb performance by Prabhudheva in a bar  to the song Happy hour hai.

And then it peters out for a sizeable part of the second half.

In a film of this genre, a complex storyline is neither expected nor necessary, but you do need to wrap up loose ends and maintain an unrelenting momentum with your dances. ABCD 2 does not. In some aspects, it seems not to be even trying. Fortunately, after faltering post-interval, it picks itself up to do justice to some of the most fantastic dancers ever to be assembled for a Hindi film.

No, ABCD 2 is not quite what it could have been, but it’s only fair to point out that when the going is good it’s so bloody darned good, that I’d rewatch it without batting an eyelid.

Director-choreographer Remo D’souza’s ABCD 2 is sort of a sequel to ABCD, the sleeper hit from 2013 that featured Prabhudheva as dance guru Vishnu struggling to cope with the politics in his troupe and the games being played by a rival. “Sort of a sequel” because Prabhudheva is back as Vishnu but other actors from the previous film return playing different people.

Vishnu is an alcoholic and a genius who is pursued by disgraced Mumbai dancer Suresh (Varun Dhawan) to train a troupe for a world hip-hop championship in Las Vegas. Suresh’s team had earlier been thrown out of a major Indian contest on charges of plagiarism. Desperate to regain his honour, Suresh courts Vishnu until he relents. The road to the finale in Vegas is filled with potholes, not the least of them being Vishnu’s past, but the central characters, including Suresh’s childhood friend Vinnie (Shraddha Kapoor), refuse to give up on their passion for their art.

This being a film directed by a choreographer with multiple choreographers in the credits and several career dancers in the cast, it is not surprising that the dancing in ABCD 2 often boggles the mind. The cinematography is designed to inspire awe towards the dancers. Particularly interesting is the camerawork for the song If you hold my hand, deliberately designed to make Shraddha, Varun and Lauren Gottlieb seem like Lilliputians in a magnificent natural setting.

Both the cinematography and the choreography are well-suited to a 3D film. In fact, the choice of 3D was clearly not casually made. At many points in the film I felt I was part of the audience on screen. On other occasions it seemed like the audience on screen was seated among us.

The cast too is well chosen. Prabhudheva’s elastic body is part of Indian cinematic lore. Though he does not get enough scenes to showcase his legendary skills in ABCD 2, when he does dance he threatens to bring on a national epidemic of goosebumps.

Varun’s films so far have repeatedly showcased his considerable dancing talent. Though it is easy to separate the god from the disciple when Suresh matches steps with Vishnu, it is still evident that this young man is one of contemporary Bollywood’s best in that department.

The surprise package here is Shraddha. We already know she can act. Well. ABCD 2 shows us that she is a fluid, graceful dancer. It might be an over-statement to describe her as incredible, but it is obvious that she has the potential to get there. In fact, it would have been nice to see a greater focus on Vinnie in many more of the dance items in this film. 

The star dancer of ABCD 2’s youngsters though is Lauren playing the half-Indian Olive (not Rhea, the character she played in ABCD). The impact she makes is a measure of her considerable dancing skills, considering that she makes an appearance late in the second half. Yes the supporting players in Vishnu’s troupe are all amazing – in particular Raghav Jhuyal, Sushant Pujari and Dharmesh Yelande – but the one who chews up the screen with her moves during a solo act is Lauren. Tere naam ka tattoo is one of ABCD 2’s highlights.

The centrepiece of this film though is Hey Ganaraya which the entire team performs in Vegas. It must rank as one of the most beautiful stage dance sequences ever seen in Bollywood, complete with a stunning musical composition and rich costumes. This worthy tribute to Lord Ganesh is a brilliant Indian adaptation of hip hop which is an all-American freestyle dance form.

I wish the film had ended here. It did not.

I wish I could end this review here. I cannot.

ABCD 2 has too many flaws to be ignored. Firstly, too long a portion in the second half feels like a Las Vegas tourism ad. The dancing too, which is stupendous until the clock strikes interval, gets sterile for a while, with the early post-interval performances seeming more technically polished than drawn from the heart. All that changes, thankfully, with Olive’s arrival.

Lauren’s fire underlines a question begging to be asked: why do Remo’s films as director (F.A.L.T.U., ABCD, ABCD 2) have space for only one or two women in large male dancing line-ups. C’mon Remo, women are not exceptions among humans, they are a norm, just like men.

It’s inexplicable too that in a film filled with lovely songs by Sachin-Jigar and imaginative costumes, the director chose to end with a manipulatively patriotic number in which the men are togged out in awkward-looking outfits. Their semi-toplessness somehow does not work (despite the nice bodies on display), and the deshbhakti is just too high strung.

On the story front, the film seems often to be on the verge of telling us why Suresh indulged in plagiarism, yet it does not. How can a cheat be painted as a sweet soul without any explanation? Was the imitation unintentionally done at a sub-conscious level because he idolised the source and immersed himself in their work? Suresh and Vinnie seem to think he was unfairly accused, yet they don’t say why. This glaring loophole contributes to ABCD 2’s less than satisfactory feel.

An air of suspense is also sought to be built around Vishnu in Vegas, with him speaking on the phone to someone about money being arranged, yet we never find out why he needed that cash.

While the screenplay by Tushar Hiranandani and Remo can be faulted on these fronts, elsewhere the writers seamlessly inject sweetness into the proceedings, especially the Olive-Vinnie relationship which threatens briefly to blow up into a clichéd love triangle but does not.

Similarly, I just love the fact that a big deal is not made of Vishnu’s roots. Considering the cosmopolitan nature of Mumbai, it’s strange that there are so few non-North Indian, non-Marathi characters in Mumbai films. From an industry that might once have caricatured Vishnu, it’s refreshing to see that a song and dance is not made about his being a south Indian, or for that matter about his heavily accented Hindi.

It’s just as nice to see notoriously non-inclusive Bollywood feature a significant deaf-mute character (Punit Pathak) in the story. It might have been even better if we could have understood exactly how he operates. There are actually some interesting technicalities involved here, as I learnt from watching Neerav Ghosh’s Soundtrack starring Rajeev Khandelwal as a DJ who loses his hearing, and the film on which it was based, It’s All Gone Pete Tong. ABCD 2 leaves us with this grandiose explanation: if you feel the music anybody can dance.

If only a teeny bit more attention had been paid to the writing of ABCD 2, this could have been a great film. Well, even with its blemishes, it is remarkably entertaining. Now waiting for ABCD 3.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	154 minutes

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyABCD2

REVIEW 335: HAMARI ADHURI KAHANI

Release date:	June 12, 2015
Director:	Mohit Suri
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Rajkummar Rao, Suhasini Mulay, Amala Akkineni, Prabal Panjabi, Namit Das, Madhurima Tuli, Sara Khan Hindi

This film should not be called Hamari Adhuri Kahani (HAK). A far more appropriate title would be Hamari Aadhi-Adhuri Khokli Film Ki Kahani.

To be fair, Mahesh Bhatt’s story for HAK is not without merit. In particular, the motivations of one character – the terror accused Hari Prasad (played by Rajkummar Rao) – are fascinating, because the extent to which humans will go to get revenge is always worth exploring. It is also worth exploring, as HAK fleetingly does, the motivations of women when they cover their bodies in numerous announcements of their marital status (the mangalsutra/thaali maala, red bangles, sindoor,  wedding ring, the works), take on their husband’s surnames and carry babies through nine months of energy-sapping pregnancy only to round it off with painful labour before blithely handing the child over to be named after the father and socially be deemed his heir, not hers.

Neither of these is an element to be ignored. Sadly, an outdated storytelling style, a surfeit of cliches, an alarming degree of literalness in its metaphors (especially the references to Radha-Krishna and Sita), some conflicted and laboured ‘feminism’ and terrible dialogue writing end up ruining the potential of this Vidya Balan-Emraan Hashmi-starrer.

Bhatt Senior’s basic plotline is interesting, but he fleshes it out poorly. Given the story’s lack of heft, director Mohit Suri’s deliberately languid pace becomes tedious early on. Worse, writer Shagufta Rafique gives HAK some of the most laughably bombastic dialogues to emerge from mainstream, high-end Bollywood in a while. She is clearly aiming for an approach that was popular in 1970s-80s Hindi cinema. Here’s the thing, Shagufta-ji… First, human beings in the real world have never spoken that way, but we were willing to indulge in a collective national suspension of disbelief for a while because it was fun to do so. The fantasy that was enjoyable back then is not so much any more though ’cos we’ve outgrown that era. If you do wish to revisit it, you need the combined panache of writer Rajat Aroraa and director Milan Luthria who pulled it off in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai (2010) and The Dirty Picture (2011). Mohit and Shagufta, you have delivered some entertaining films together in the past – 2011’s Murder 2, for instance, was neat. But the dialogue-baazi of HAK and its half-hearted direction kill the film.

Why does a hard-as-nails, apathetic police officer unexpectedly decide to help Vasudha Prasad (Vidya) escape her husband so that she can be with Aarav? Kyunki yeh kaaynaath bhi sachche pyaar karne waalon ki madad karne ko taiyyaar ho jaata hai (because all of Creation steps up to aid the cause of true love), the gentleman in uniform explains.

Why is billionaire Aarav Ruparel (Emraan) so in love with Vasudha? Because bahut saare patey thhey mere, par ghar tumne dilaaya (I had many addresses, but you got me a home), he says.

Woven around such lines is the sketchy tale of Vasudha, abandoned by her husband a year after marriage yet clinging – literally – for dear life to her mangalsutra. Why? Because our values are racing through our veins (i.e. nass-nass mein), she says. Sad and pretty Vasudha arranges flowers for a living in a luxury hotel where Aarav arrives as a guest one day. After two meetings, much gazing and some borderline stalking, as floral scents float through the air from Mumbai to Dubai, he develops behad ishq and mohabbat (boundless love) for her.

Aarav is a business wizkid with his own dukhi bachpan ki kahaani. He also has a weird reason (Oedipal, though unintentionally so, I suspect) for being drawn to Vasudha: she reminds him of his mother. Combine his back story with her miserable present and a contrived climax involving Bastar, and the result is HAK.

Vidya and Emraan have a flair for bombast-by-design as you can see from their track record (he was in Once Upon A Time…, they co-starred in Dirty Picture). Here though they are completely wasted, with little to do but pose around between those hackneyed conversations and speeches.

The film has evident pretensions to epic emotions, but extreme close-ups of the leads’ faces, her tears and her curls cannot compensate for a weak story. In fact, Vishnu Rao’s long shots of some attractive locations (an overhead view of Mumbai, a garden in Dubai, the sands of the desert city) get tedious beyond a point in this soulless film. Rao shows little imagination in capturing Bastar, though even his regular shots of a spectacular locale are better than the glaringly fake computer imagery used to conjure up a field of flowers in crucial scenes in rural Chhattisgarh.

Suhasini Mulay though gets the worst of the cinematography: when her face is caught in tight close-ups, she looks like a woman possessed by a spirit rather than an elderly relative offering kindly advice to Vasudha. It’s nice to see Amala after so many years in a Hindi film (as Aarav’s mother), but the stand-out member of the supporting cast is Prabal Panjabi (playing Aarav’s employee Apurva) whose inexplicable screen presence gives us one of HAK’s most unwittingly comical scenes: in which he declares his friendship and (platonic?) love for Aarav.

As for the film’s seeming ‘liberalism’, the unspirited Vasudha dramatically transforms into a modern-day Durga in a late scene with her husband to articulate some very valid thoughts about a woman’s identity being inextricably linked to her husband’s, but the point is entirely lost in the speechifying, the trite imagery of Durga’s idols passing behind her just then (Vasudha is very conveniently in Kolkata at the time) and the film’s completely contradictory stance until then.

No doubt women like Vasudha do exist – there is nothing wrong in portraying this reality. The problem lies in the fact that the film itself seems to endorse the stupidity of such women, going by the symbolism of a naari as a man’s slave appearing repeatedly through the narrative till then: Vasudha cleans her husband’s feet when he turns up at her house after five years, a filthy, bedraggled creep demanding her affection and loyalty; later she falls at Aarav’s feet on discovering that he intends to save that same abusive husband.

Then of course there is the not-so-minor point that early on in the film when Vasudha dashes off to save Aarav from a fire in a hotel, he yells at the hotel’s security staff with this spectacularly sexist line: ek aurat ko mujhe bachaana pada! A mere aurat! Imagine that!

Spectacularly sexist and spectacularly boring – that’s a lethal combination. It hurts to see Vidya in such a film.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	131 minutes