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Exploring discord
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The current craze for India in the West has crowds flocking to Indian movies. But they are looking for a contemporary urban scene, not the old rural landscape. That's why `Let's Talk' scored at the Locarno International Film Festival, says GOWRI RAMNARAYAN.
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Bomman Irani and Mala Katrak in "Let's Talk".
"INTELLIGENT, literary." The script drew approval from no less a person than writer Anita Desai. And though the film was constructed as a series of cascading conversations between two characters, the visual sequencing sparkled in their inward journey through failures, frailties, fiascos, fantasies...
From this year, the Locarno International Film Festival (August 2002) has set up a separate section for video films, the genre of the future. The standard was high and varied — from real life traumas of a crack-addicted Black American family ("Love and Diane", Jennifer Dworkin), to avant-garde shiver-n-scream ("Dracula, Pages from a Virgin's Diary", Guy Maddin). Yet, the audience loved "Let's Talk" by debut director Ram Madhvani from Mumbai. In the long, animated, post-screening discussion, some even voted it the best film in the festival.
Director Ram Madhvani.
The reasons were obvious. The current craze for India in the West draws crowds for a "Marattam" (Aravindan) as well as a "Sholay" (Ramesh Sippy). Stolid Swiss citizens hum a ghazal from "Umrao Jaan" in the bus stop outside the theatre. Salwar kameezes, kurtas, tote bags with "Bollywood" embroidered in chamki, silver Ganeshas on saucer-size pendants, calendar god T-shirts are all in for the firangs. Indian cinema is no longer limited to Adoor-Kaul references in public school accents. In Locarno's Piazza Grande, thousands broke into explosive cheers for Shabana Azmi and Om Puri and screamed themselves hoarse for Aamir Khan.
In more serious fare from India, Europe is looking for the contemporary urban scene, not the old rural landscape of "Pather Panchali" and "Samskara". A German viewer explained, "In `Let's Talk' I see that couples in your country have the same discords as we do here." A French woman nodded, "We can connect with their problem." Referring to the festival retrospective of Indian films an Italian said, "Mrinal Sen's `Amaar Bhuvan' was like a village folk tale from faraway. Feudal prostitution in `Dasi' (Narsing Rao) fascinated me like something from a different planet. But in `Let's Talk' I feel at home. I see my life on the screen."
Such "Who''s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" models are not new to the West. "But we haven't seen it in Indian settings," says the European viewer. A film critic recalled Govind Nihalani's "Drishti" but felt it had lost itself in abstractions while Madhvani had his roots in realism!
"Let's Talk" is only apparently realistic. At the start, you find Radhika telling her friend that she is pregnant, the father is her lover. How will her husband react to the situation? As the film progresses in a series of dialogues between the couple, the director and actors (Boman Irani/Maia Katrak) try to bridge the gap between the spoken and the unspoken, the stated and the connoted, the known and the unknown motivations, which instigate emotion and action. The lover remains off screen. Does he really exist? Is he a figment of Radhika's imagination, the image of her yearning for understanding, tender attentiveness, and exciting sex, all missing in the midlife matter-of-factness of her marriage?
Madhvani uses the thumri which "expresses a single thought in a multiplicity of moods" to indicate alternative realities; as also the Radha-Krishna archetype of perfect lover and eternal seeker. Slices of simulated TV footage (reminiscent of the years-ago frenzy of Ganesha "drinking" milk across the globe) have sound bytes from women to whom Lord Krishna has appeared in person (!), of raslila processions through the streets. Both devices are needless additives, bits of exotica thrust in for the phoren palate. Nor did the thumri rise above background score.
The director trusts his audience, leaving you free to interpret as you like. Despite being shot twice (in the advertising style of "scratch" and final versions) he retains spontaneity in dialogue, gesture and choreographed movements. The pair go through several reactions to the situation — by turns the husband is dazed and unbelieving, protective and caring of the "naïve" woman, violent and abusive, throws himself from the top floor in a frenzy, tries to rationalise the whats and whys of the betrayal. In the process, he reveals his inmost insecurities and burdens. The wife tries to explain how her affair has given her a new lease of sensuality and thereby restored her sensitivity to life. Likewise, the "Hinglish" they speak in decibels high and low, speeds fast and slow, is as natural as it is inevitable in their circumstances.
The film scores in acting performances, Katrak is good foil to Boman Irani's superb modulations on the theme. Minuses? The film refuses to budge from its masculine perspective in which the woman appears a heedless wimp. The contemporary setting does not rescue the characters entirely from the stereotype mould. The women friends talk like teenagers rather than mature adults.
"Let's Talk" is a strong debut, the start of deeper explorations in crafting products crisp, rugged, and modern in frame and content.
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