Rating : 2/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2019
Running time : 2 hours
Director : Shelly Chopra Dhar
Cast : Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Anil Kapoor, Rajkummar Rao, Juhi Chawla, Abhishek Duhan, Seema Pahwa, Brijendra Kalra, Regina Cassandra
Kid rating : PG-13
With Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga I was expecting a lazy, ghisa-pita jaded tale of Bollywoodian romance. What I got was way worse.
If you’ve been listening to the buzz around this film, you already know that this is a lesbian love story gone mainstream. Amazingly “mainstream” and “lesbian” in the Bollywood context aren’t oxymorons anymore. So yes, ELKDTAL is a brave film for even venturing down this path. Unfortunately for us, brave does not equal watchable.
Sweety (Kapoor Ahuja) from Moga, Punjab, is a closeted lesbian. Brother Babloo “Virji” (Duhan), a stickler for patriarchal norms, suspects as much, and keeps a close eye on “abnormal” Sweety. When he realizes that she’s been making trips to Delhi to meet her female lover Kuhu (Cassandra), he concocts a story about her being in love with a Muslim man and exhorts their father, businessman Balbir Chaudhary (Kapoor), to marry her off to a “nice Hindu boy”. And then . . .
Early on in the film, in the dim confines of a theater watching a play, Sweety opines that the play she’s watching is flawed – it “has no feel”. This is ironical because this is pretty much the way I feel about ELKDTAL – no feel, no depth, no nuance. This film is superficial in the extreme; it broaches the topic of homosexuality but once broached doesn’t know what to do with it. Another problem is that for an “empowering” film, this has its female protagonist unable to help herself – she needs male assistance to even speak her mind! The film also implies that the female point-of-view is not enough – it must be accepted and validated by a male one to pass muster.
The film’s characters apart from Sweety and Sahil are run-of-the-mill Yashraj stereotypes – the beaming Beeji, the jovial father figure Balraj, swagger-filled Virji, bantering, adoring servants. The characters though are ill-defined, especially Sweety’s and Kuhu’s. Their relationship is not really shown too much, so it’s hard feeling for them. There were some moving scenes depicting a father’s love, and one to-be-remembered dialog from Anil Kapoor where he says that homosexuality is inborn, and has nothing to do with western culture.
Sonam is very weak as Sweety. She fails to portray the mental tumult, loneliness of a closeted lesbian; a few angsty glances and some hand-wringing doesn’t quite cut it. I don’t give her all the blame (director Dhar must share) – after all she was marvelous in Delhi-6.
ELKDTAL is insipid and slow-paced; I actually nodded off in the first half, the husband had to prod me awake. I wish that it had a rousing screenplay and a fiery, anger-filled heroine instead of this weak, wilting one to lead the charge. This could have been a much better film, if it had decided to delve deeper, speak plainer and actually point some fingers (a la Pink) instead of just whitewashing the solution as “acceptance”. Acceptance doesn’t come about all of a sudden, one fine day. It takes time, an open mind, and the ability to countenance a different point of view – a truth this film seems to be unable to speak or address.
Kidwise: Clean. Talk of homosexuality.
