At times in film festivals, movies can collectively give a theme to the day that the viewer may not have foreseen or accounted for. Landing at Toronto International Film Festival on the day India turned a beautiful rainbow with the Supreme Court’s historic judgment, the first film at TIFF couldn’t have been more appropriate than Colette .
Set between 1893 and 1905 in Paris and Saint Sauveur, it is a coming of age story of a sharp, witty country girl, who overlooks her own writing talent for the “higher” love for Willy, the dominating, emotional bully of a “literary entrepreneur” she is married to. She ghost-writes his novels, creates the iconic character of Claudine for him, drawn from her own childhood and growing up years. He dismisses her work initially as cloying, plot-less and full of adjectives but then picks it up conveniently to make his life turn a corner; taking credit for it because “women writers don’t sell”.
A wake-up call
Wash Westmoreland’s biographical film on the French writer is about her journey into breaking away from the toxic love of the man, fighting for her rightful credit and also awakening fully to her own sexuality, embracing her queerness and finding true love in a gender-defying, “gentle” wo/man called Missy. Keira Knightley charts the progress — from innocence, loneliness, vulnerability and dependence to self-realisation, maturity, power, freedom and control — with tremendous elan. And, most significantly, while being unconsciously placed at a profound intersection between feminist and queer politics.
The Paris of the day is a compelling portrait of a larger societal conservatism and individual rebellions and licentiousness.
The transactional nature of the relationships is fascinating. A wife telling the husband that his jealousy for another man was misplaced because she found his wife more interesting. He encouraging her to reciprocate her interest because the next in the Claudine novel could be about the “tender feelings she develops for a lady friend”. And it all leading up to a lustful, profligate triangle.
Another TIFF film where the themes of feminism, gender and sexual identity go hand in hand is Rima Das’ latest Bulbul Can Sing . Like Colette , it is also about a young girl “finding” herself and her voice.
If on the one hand she is fighting the expectations of being modest and calm like all women are meant to be, on the other she is also battling on behalf of her young pal, Sumu, who is ridiculed as “ladies” for not living up to the ideals of masculinity. Patriarchy is equally stacked against both.
With a narrative that flows along with the natural rhythms of the daily life in Assam villages, Das shines a light on contentious issues in her own gentle, restrained and mild way.
(The writer is in Toronto at the invitation of TIFF)
