Simran has something Bunty Aur Babli about it. See it just as a heist film and it doesn’t work quite as well — bank robberies that leave you incredulous what with American bankers and cops coming across as astonishingly clueless and thick, giving their own president a good run for his money. What makes it worse is a ham of a foreign cast — be it the bar tender at a Las Vegas casino or the villainous money lender.
Look away from these quibbles and, like B&B , Simran offers the possibility of an interesting study — of ambitions, dreams and the incredible lure of money and how it affects individuals and relationships. It might be helmed, nay dominated, by a big star and may have arrived at the box office with big noise and high stakes attached but remains essentially a small, indie-spirited film at heart. Rather, it could and should have been one, what with no lofty story-telling, no elaborate, drawn out plot; just a wisp of an idea, a slice of a Gujarati-American girl’s tempestuous life and the twists and turns it takes while chasing moolah.
- Director: Hansal Mehta
- Starring: Kangana Ranaut, Sohum Shah, Hiten Kumar, Kishori Shahane Vij
- Storyline: Inspired by the real life “Bombshell Bandit” Sandeep Kaur, Simran is about a hotel housekeeper of Indian descent in the U.S. who takes to robbing banks to pay off her debts.
- Run time: 124 minutes
More than two decades ago there was the docile NRI Simran who wouldn’t even dare to dream in her sleep without her bauji’s permission. On the contrary, here we have Kangana Ranaut as Praful Patel (aka Simran, courtesy a nod to Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge ) whose relationship with her father (Hiten Kumar) is a mini-war zone. He can’t reconcile to his 30-year-old daughter’s divorce, boyfriends and general recklessness; she mocks him for being a petty shopkeeper, for his banal life behind the shop counter. And, extremely believably, what begin as small arguments lead to big conflicts with the mother (Kishori Shahane Vij) caught in the middle. It’s this perpetual father-daughter skirmish that, for me, is the film’s keystone with Kumar making one grasp, absorb and feel the exasperation, anger and weariness of his character, when it comes to the daughter he can’t quite get a handle on. The conversations, the give-and-take seem picked up from real life. As do Praful’s interactions with the suitor (Sohum Shah) — the good boy who wears “tailored pant suit”— who she may be fond of but would she be able to live with?
So you have Praful with hardly any funds and too low a credit rating to be eligible for a loan for the minority housing scheme she wants to invest in. On top of that she loses all her savings in gambling, runs up a huge debt and takes to robbing banks to pay it all off. The thieving may have started unknowingly but she begins to enjoy it, even taking god’s blessings for success in her enterprise.
There is something to be said about the deeply flawed and profligate Praful — essentially the nice girl next door but just as easily swayed and susceptible to transgressions; free-spirited, independent yet openly opportunistic (the fights with father notwithstanding she has no qualms about asking him to invest with her jointly in property); manipulative in her relationships yet aware of the goodness of those she might be exploiting; displaying signs of vulnerability even at her most headstrong and vice versa; going through punishment for her crime, redeemed but not entirely repentant; most of all, unapologetic about and owning up to her addictions, failings and choices, be they good or bad, about her men or her drinks. The tone swings between the jocular and the serious but never too grim and grave. And Ranaut swings between the easy-going and the self-conscious in taking us through the gamut. Expectedly the camera never quite leaves her alone; she is in every frame, at times wearily so.
What’s interesting is that her Praful is never built as a role model. The filmmaker remains non-judgmental about her; the audience doesn’t know what to make of her. I found that strangely liberating: an on-screen woman you can’t pin down or put in a straightjacket; for a change.
