Move over gents, the ladies are here
A dark room. A guy gets thrown into that room naked. We here the noise of the door being locked up. They guy cries out. But, we do not see him but instead we see a lady curled up in a corner. Upright. Naked and ashamed. But, the eyes! They do not convey the shame. They instead convey the spite, the angst, the fruitless rage and above all, the mystery!!
Another near dark room. Green hued. Four people in it. But our eyes get locked on to a petite lady sitting at a table strumming a guitar cross legged in a chair. She looks up. There is a lot of dialogue happening. But, here again, the eyes! We cannot take our eyes off her. Here, it’s the power, the politics of the moment, the naked desire to rule and the physical satisfaction of having ‘men’ doing her bidding!!
Yet another dark room. Another lady. She opens the door for her husband. He flirts with her. She does not reply with words as there is a joint family in the house and she thinks it would be outrageous to flirt back. So, she does the same with her eyes. We watch her over the shoulder of her husband convey her desires in one series of eye gestures. Overt yet so cute!
Then, another lady, at the end of a dark corridor. She is just back from a passionate embrace with her boy friend and is consumed with desire, unfulfilled. Her father is calling out from the other end. He is walking towards her. She raises her head to answer him. The eyes here! Conveys the whole gamut of emotions of desire. The fun, the forbidden lust, the anxiety, the fear and the excitement, all untold!!
A sunlit street. A lady who has been through it all. On the street. She is proceeding towards a destination. Work. Karma. Unspoken. Mute. Her eyes survey her surroundings. But we see something else. Determination. The steely will to fight. But detached or distant, if one would want to use that word. A look patented by many Mumbai commuters. The “fight for survival” look!
The first lady is Anuja (Jesse Randhawa) from Gulaal. The second lady is Kiran (Ayesha Mohan) from Gulaal again. The third woman is Priya (Neetu Chandra) from 13B, the fourth woman is Paro (Mahie Gill) and the fifth lady is Sonam Mishra (Konkona Sen Sharma) from Luck By Chance. We know about the movies, their stories and what they did to movie lovers this year. Let us now rejoice over the arrival, not so much in the case of Konkona as the others, of five very young and worthy female actors who have truly set the pace for expressive acts in films where their male counterparts have taken all the kudos up to now.
I shall take the case of each actor specifically. Jesse was not known as an actor at all. Her fleeting appearance as a night club dancer in Kashyap’s “No Smoking” did not make any heart skip or tongues wag. So, this was fresh territory. But, look at what she has gone and done. She just converted her languid model walk into steely determination amidst small town cultural disorder. The kind of disorder where even the security guard can look through the virtue of a lady, the kind where being modern would even earn the ire of fellow women, not to forget that here she is a professor of the local university, the kind where the male gaze is all pervasive. We had applauded a similar Monisha Koirala long ago for her similar portrayal in “Company”. But, here there is an added dimension. The love and care for Dileep, unspoken. The look. This was new territory for the actor – model and Jesse has pulled it off admirably.
I do not know much of Ayesha Mohan. So, I had no expectations before the film. In fact, nobody discussed her then or since. But, why does that scene in that green room come back to haunt? Is it because I felt that she was this frail girl caught amidst the fury of the people around her? The naked lust for power! Or was she the master manipulator before things turned gory? Remarkably, Ayesha did not do much. She did not huff and puff, blow smoke rings in the air or slo-mo stare into the others out of frame. This was simply good old character acting, staying within the ambit of her character and using those eyes for additional effect. The unwavering stare. Kashyap’s women are probably going to stare everyone down in the oncoming years. But we loved it, didn’t we?
Neetu Chandra is an addition I just could not resist. I do not think Vikram K Kumar, the director, had too many sleepless nights before casting her as he had Madhavan and PC Sreeram to do the pyrotechnics in this modern horror film. But, he must have thanked Ayyappa in glee when he got this wonderfully expressive actress to do what she has gone and done. I mean picture this – she is in bed after Madhavan hands her a copy of Kamasutra to go through. He is washing up before bed and speaking to her in metaphors about the poses in Kamasutra. Something like “Page no. 33 pe Chicken Tandoori kaisa laga”. She is understandably blushing yet it is her bedroom and so she is bold enough to say, “pata nahin yeh sab kaise karte hongey!!” Just see her doing this very intimate yet humorous scene and you will know how good see is. And why does she remind me so much of Jaya Bhaduri, of yore?
Mahi Gill as Paro has been written about a lot. Kashyap knows her worth. He also knows the worth of her close ups. The audience also knows about her worth by now. So much so, three guys behind me in the hall comment, “abe Mahi hai, phir theek hai baap”…this after the whole cast has gone by in the opening titles, during Gulaal. But as Paro, in that life defining role, she was outstanding. The scene spoken above may have been well attempted by maybe a Tabu or a Rekha of yore? So good, it was.
Konkona Sen Sharma, I would not even venture to say much. As there is so much originality in her understanding of a character and her situation. Her approach to a scene is mind boggling. What I have always noticed is that she brings down the character to manageable substance and then gives her unique take, whether a Page 3 or a Traffic Signal or a Metro or now in Luck By Chance. The voice is tempered to effectively flush out the feelings of the character, the silences are defined (the directors must surely be going orgasmic with mutating imagination after they have successfully signed her up), the body language is free of awkwardness, precise and in character and lastly, the eyes! If one still wants to check out more, please do rush in a DVD of Omkara and see her burst the screen as a rural housewife!! And no comparisons here, even her mother Aparna Sen would huff and puff trying to match her.
And only the other day I was lamenting to a PFC friend that we do not have good female actors any more. How wrong can I be??
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Man, I think you are a romantic! Welcome to the club!!
jesse’s dance in no smoking was perfect. I never saw the movie but saw the song alone and was mesmerised by the fact that one hardly saw her face a lot , the unflattering suit but the dance moves were classy.
I hope neetu chandra and mahi get tons of good work. Konkona is riding high.
I wouldnt count Rani Mukherjee out still. Loved her in Yuva, Sathiya and Bunty and Bubli. She is a good performer. Am hoping to see some better fare from her.
Insightful Article Indraneel. You do understand women well!
@anand – romantic and me!..aah, but it has been a lifetime of study..
@darkanddusky – Rani is passe unless she completely reinvents herself like Preity is doing
@Arun – Kya kahein!!
Well written Indraneel. Well analysed.
@paromeeta – Thanks and actually I think in retrospect that some female actors are getting really better with their stuff, did you see Preity in Heroes?
Very nice article!
i saw 13B and found neetu chandra to be wanting in some of scenes…she could have done a better job in my opinion…though she pulls off the cheesy sequence concerning various chicken dishes fairly well…
well observed…
well researched…
well put !!!
@indraneel,
Rani just needs to get out of the stupor that she is in. She has the ability to pull off any kind of role. rustic, sophisticated, fiery , sensitive Ive seen her in all kinds of roles… no reinventions required….she needs to simply step out of the yash raj camp and stay away from the Nikhil Advanis…