Spoilers ahead…
Shelly Chopra Dhar’s Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga opens with a big, fat Bollywood wedding — but like everything else in the film, it’s also about something else, something sadder, something deeper. Look past the bigness and the fatness and the colour-saturated Bollywood-ness, and you’ll see Balbir Chaudhary (Anil Kapoor) pausing at the jalebi counter and making a heart-shaped “designer jalebi”. He hearts cooking. He wanted to be a chef, but his mother (Madhumalti Kapoor) didn’t think a man belonged in a kitchen — and now, he runs the biggest garments company in Moga, Punjab. “Life’s good,” he later tells his daughter Sweety (Sonam K Ahuja). But you wonder how much better it would have been had he been allowed to be himself, and not the person his parents (or society) expected him to be.
The pressure to conform continues in the next generation. Sahil (Rajkummar Rao, giving a masterclass on how an alert actor can flesh out a stick-figure role) is the son of a film producer, but to his father’s dismay, he’s slumming it out as a playwright. As for Sweety… Stop right now if you don’t know what the film is about and want to be surprised. The rest of you know, by now, that she’s gay. After years of being shunned by her peers, she finds love with Kuhu (Regina Cassandra), though, in a weak moment, she says she wishes she were “normal”. Kuhu snaps, “If you won’t accept yourself, how will others accept you?” But we sense in Sahil and Sweety at least the semblance of rebellion. They haven’t caved in like Balbir. They haven’t made their peace with being “normal”.
For a while, I wrote Ek Ladki Ko Dekha off as a missed opportunity. It’s pleasant. It’s never less than watchable, and the very entertaining supporting characters make a case for deserving movies of their own. Take Balbir’s mother, the location of whose “tijori” (safe) makes you laugh. Or take Billo (Seema Pahwa), the family’s cook who likes to place bets. Or take Chhatro (Juhi Chawla), who thinks she’s a “mind-shattering” actress. Each one of them proves good for a chuckle or two, but their eccentricities don’t turn into great running gags. The bigger problem is that anyone who knows Sweety’s secret will find it difficult to sit through her early scenes with Sahil, who falls for her. It’s not a good decision to wait till the interval point to reveal a “twist” that we’ve been guessing about since the film’s trailer dropped. This makes the early Sahil scenes redundant, predictable.
But the second half turns things around. I realised I had underestimated the film… just like I’d underestimated Chhatro. It turns out she isn’t so empty-headed, after all. Behind the helium giggles, there’s a strong woman who has decided to live life on her own terms. (In other words, she no longer feels the pressure to conform.) Likewise, behind the generic facade of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha lies a very specific design. I mean, the first half could (and should) have been written better, but you see why the familiar, comforting convention of the “twist” was needed. In the mainstream tradition, apparently, the more subversive the story (Lamhe, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna), the more sweetener it needs in terms of stars, colour, glamour. But here, the “Bollywoodisation” serves another purpose. Instead of getting all radical and artsy (and possibly “truer”) about it, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha takes a number of Hindi cinema clichés and bends them, showing us that, on the surface, a “gay story” is as “normal” as a Bollywood story in which a girl is in love with a boy and her conservative family decides to arrange her marriage with someone else. The film simply replaces the obstacle. Instead of rich-poor or Hindu-Muslim, we have girl-girl — and when someone storms out during the rehearsals of a staged play, we even get the equivalent of a “yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti” moment.
In terms of look and feel, what we’re seeing here is not the sophistication (and the inevitable niche-ness) of a Kapoor & Sons, but something planted right in the middle of conventional Hindi cinema. And what could be more conventional than Yash Chopra’s cinema. The screenplay (by the director and Gazal Dhaliwal) is inspired by PG Wodehouse’s A Damsel in Distress, but there’s an equal-sized debt to our biggest hetero-romance, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. We get the mustard fields. We get the big wedding celebration, a closing scene set in a railway station, a shy romance (like the Anupam Kher track) between Balbir and Chhatro, and a “jee le apni zindagi” surrender from a hitherto stubborn father.
But the patriarch, here, is much nicer — and a lot of it is surely due to Anil Kapoor, who invests so much conviction into every scene. The very funny bit where he takes to speaking Urdu made me half-wish the film had been a full-out comedy instead. And he kills it in the emotional scenes. But I suspect Ek Ladki Ko Dekha needed him for another reason, the meta angle. The title uses one of the actor’s most famous love songs and makes us wonder: Why can’t Sonam (and women from her generation) fall for a girl the way her father (and the men from his generation) fell for Manisha Koirala? The songs composed for this film (by Rochak Kohli) are weak, but another number that makes itself felt is from Kareeb (directed, like 1942: A Love Story, by this film’s producer, Vidhu Vinod Chopra). Sweety’s ring tone is Chori chori jab nazrein mili. That old Hindi-cinema tradition of shy looks between boy and girl has now been appropriated for girl and girl.
And then, the film gets fully meta, with a Hamlet-like play-within-a-(screen)play. This homestretch is brilliant. The play acting that Sweety does at home (hiding her truth) is channeled into her acting in a play, which is about her and which makes the audience complicit: the audience of this play becomes the audience of this movie. Some of the audience on screen cannot stomach this “perversion”. They walk away. (They’re like the audience around me who laughed when a tearful Sweety came out.) Others stick around. Some are moved. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha isn’t stentorian about its message. It says some people are going to be able to handle gayness, while others are going to be harder to convince. (And maybe some won’t be convinced at all.) The important thing is that no one (on screen) stops the play, just like no ultra-conservative outfit (off screen) has demanded a ban on this movie.
I wish Sonam were a better actress. She’s good in the lighter scenes. She’s charming when she’s not trying too hard. But she comes unstuck in the emotional scenes, and you have to wonder how much more convincing Ek Ladki Ko Dekha would have been with an actress more capable of taking us into Sweety’s soul. Still, Sweety is a moving creation. When someone knocks on the door, she backs away from a hug (with Kuhu) as though by reflex. She’s so afraid that it doesn’t occur to her that no one is going to think much about two girls embracing. (They’d think the girls are friends.) Say what you will about Sonam’s performing skills, there’s no denying her conviction to change what we know as “mainstream fare”. You may not especially care for Veere Di Wedding or Ek Ladki Ko Dekha as movies. But years from now, they’re going to be talked about not necessarily as Great Films ™, but as films that (hopefully) opened doors and made a difference. I’m sure some people will complain that there are hardly any scenes between Sweety and Kuhu, that the gayness has been sanitised, made chaste. But given that it took some seventy years to bring hetero-romances out of the flowers-kissing stage, I didn’t mind, terribly, that all that transpires between Sweety and Kuhu is some hand-holding, an embrace or two, and a kiss on the forehead. This very “safeness” is this film’s secret strength. This isn’t Blue is the Warmest Colour. It’s a YashRaj-style romance with two girls. Without discomfiting the mainstream audience, it makes it possible to talk about a “bedroom subject” in the living room.
Copyright ©2019 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
ravenus1
February 4, 2019
Well I’m glad the reviews mention the reveal because otherwise I would not have any interest in watching this movie. Like BR says the effort may not be perfect but it’s a brave move by mainstream stars (like the otherwise clumsy and awful PK’s stance against organized religion) and should be taken with that context. Will try and catch this soon.
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Anu Warrier
February 4, 2019
I give Sonam props for being unafraid to play a gay character on screen. For a mainstream ‘heroine’ (not ‘actress’) to play one in a mainstream movie (not a ‘niche’ movie, as you point out) is a huge step forward. And call me a prude – but I am not a great fan of love-making scenes, hetero or homo. Not that I want to go back to ‘two flowers nodding in the breeze’, but sometimes what’s left to your imagination is a lot more powerful than what is shown. And let’s face it – at least in our movies, lovemaking scenes are – even today – very rarely necessary in the larger scheme of things.
In any case, this must be the Hindi film version of ‘A spoonful of sugar makes everything go down.’ 🙂
But I’m looking forward to watching it – as Sucharita says on FC, ‘Women telling women’s stories!’ 🙂
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shaviswa
February 4, 2019
Hmm….your review is more interesting than the film 🙂
The story, the plot, the actors and actresses in the film…..nothing inspires me to watch this on the big screen. Maybe if I get very bored someday and this shows up on Hotstar or Amazon Prime, I might.
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Radhika
February 4, 2019
I think it’s so interesting that so many establishment critics revile Sonam so, and seem to give her peers passes. (I personally think she’s a beautiful but limited actress, but even beauty compliments seem so sparing)
Anyways, i found the movie as a whole charming and found her emotional rawness quite appealing.
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Aditi Chandra
February 5, 2019
Before writing my comment (my first on your blog), I wanted to say that I have recently started following your blog and really appreciate your interviewing skills. Your interviews are truly a pleasure to listen to. I find your film analyses extremely thoughtful – even when I may not fully agree with them. I am am art and architectural historian and teach the history of Hindi cinema occasionally. I was a little surprised at some reviewers not fully grasping why this narrative was “mainstreamed” and the value in it. So, your perspective is very refreshing. I also thought that the other reason the makers played it “safe” in terms of the LGBT theme is perhaps because they wanted to veer away from sexualization that inevitably ends up happening in the few occasions a gay romance has been shown on the Indian screen. I am assuming that they are trying to say that if a hetero romance can/could take place without sexualization of the characters then why not a gay one?
Anyway, my other question relates to your brief comment about the music of the film. I typically don’t like remixes at all, but the title track of this one was particularly beautiful and I am not sure it can even be called a remix. Chitthiye (lyrics in particular) is moving and good morning is fun. I have been listening to them quite a bit. Is this just about personal choice or is there something more you can say about your analysis of the film’s music. Many thanks for your time!
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ankit
February 5, 2019
I like how you always relate to a foreign movie in the review. I have not yet seen this movie. I saw the Blue is the warmest color recently and I was blown away by the emotional power of the movie.
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smokedustandhaze
February 5, 2019
I appreciate what they were doing conceptually. I even thought that the “twist” was an interesting choice: I think that the film-makers would have to know that viewers would see it coming and that colors the Rajkumar Rao portions in a clever way (even though he does get unreasonably high screen time, imo). He’s just behaving like a typical hero in a Bollywood hetero love-story, but we know that it’s not his story and isn’t it funny that we’d normally just assume that it was? So in theory, I like what they were doing a lot. Sweety’s story, though, did not earn any investment from me. I empathise with Sweety because of the real-world context. Her childhood scenes were adequate, but they did not move me like they could have. As for her current love story, I don’t mind at all that the film was “safe” in terms of (not) showing a sexual relationship, but I think that it erred towards not showing much of a relationship at all. We hardly see Sweety and Kuhu talking, I bought into them as a couple only because that was the central point of the movie. A combination of writing and acting made Sweety one of the less engaging characters for me. I never really felt for Sweety (and I’m pretty susceptible) and that affected my overall enjoyment of the movie, even though there was quite a lot that I liked.
Speaking of Sonam’s acting, who thought that she was believable as a small-town Punjabi girl? And if they did, why didn’t someone get her a diction coach! Even before the climax, she sounds like she’s in a school play and she worked so hard on learning her lines and she got them all out and won’t you applaud now?
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KK
February 5, 2019
There was also a movie “Margarita with a Straw” which was more “artsy” as you like to call it. So I don’t think it’s the first movie to deal with gay romance. Karan Johar also made a short film about coming out in Bombay Talkies.
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Santa
February 5, 2019
At first, I found the movie quite insipid and replete with Bollywood cliches. Be it the groan-inducing Punjabi wedding scenes, or the lame attempts at humor, or the contrived way in which boy meets girl, etc. And I especially don’t think I can take yet another rendition of ‘Gud naal ishq mitha’. The big twist when Sweety reveals all to Sahil was handled rather gracefully, though. I especially found the recounting of her childhood quite moving.
But the moment when the movie really clicked into place for me was when Sweety’s family asks Sahil about what’s so unique in his proposed play, and that we’ve seen and heard this story a gazillion times. And that’s when I realized the true brilliance of the movie was precisely in the fact that we’ve seen and heard this story a gazillion times, and that there is really nothing queer about queer love. It is normal and hence deserves a normal Bollywood treatment, warts and all. And perhaps I am reading too much into it, but it started appearing to me that all the earlier aspects that I had found annoying were actually the result of a deliberate choice rather than that of lazy movie-making.
It’s not that homosexuality has not been represented earlier. Movies such as Fire, however, can be dismissed as being too arthouse and hence not sufficiently mainstream, while movies such as Dostana, well, they can simply be dismissed altogether. But this was the first time, at least to my knowledge, in which homosexuality was dealt with in such an un-fussy manner while at the same time not being apologetic or coy about it.
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shaviswa
February 5, 2019
Just now read on Rediff that this movie flopped badly and the Rediff review was not very kind to the film.
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Aran
February 5, 2019
“I wish Sonam was a better actress.” Yes. Or played the Kuhu part, but then I guess the Anil Kapoor angle wouldnt have worked. Or maybe she could turn to production and continue making these path breaking movies, but with better actresses. Like another commenter, I wouldn’t have gone to see this if I hadn’t known that it was a lesbian love story. Sonam really isn’t a draw as the lead for me.
I understood the choices that the filmmakers made and logically I get that they made them for a reason. But there wasn’t an emotional connection at all. That was partly the writing. It was too fluffy and too, yes, safe.
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JPhil
February 6, 2019
@KK:
As a wee child,my first exposure to the possibility of two men being in a relationship came from an unlikely source: a fleeting scene of two gay(one depicted as quite camp though)men who share the incarceration of Mammotty in Balu Mehendra’s ‘Yathra’.Why it remains important for me is that at some subliminal level -in a movie about pining lovers-it looked kosher.
Perhaps movies like these -and many others forgotten-will help sensitise us ‘normal’ folks further.
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brangan
February 6, 2019
I’m not sure how to break this news, but I’ll try. Maybe I’ll sit down first. Deep breath. Here goes. I’m not going to be able to review Dhilluku Dhuddu 2. Apparently, there’s this film festival in Berlin. Man, the timing! Ah, alas and alack, I must be brave and soldier on.
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V
February 6, 2019
Santhanam says: “Ennai kalaaichutaaraamaa” 😀
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hakimokimo
February 7, 2019
BR Your comment is a perfect SLB material.
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cinemafrappe
February 7, 2019
A great analytics! Here’s my review:
http://fridayreviewer.com/ek-ladki-ko-dekha-toh-aisa-laga-mainstream-cinemas-subtle-indie-road/
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Roserose
February 7, 2019
I haven’t watched this movie. I have educated Indian friends living in the West who balk at gay relationships , have when drunk stated how disgusting the actual act is and how they worry about the bad influences in the west on their children.
They also love a truly bollywood romance..
I can see why a sweet traditional bollywood romcom with all the cliches would be acceptable and they may even watch it.
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Nathan
February 7, 2019
I’m not going to be able to review Dhilluku Dhuddu 2. Apparently, there’s this film festival in Berlin. Man, the timing!
Romba feel pannadheenga saar..Kanchana 3 release unagalukkaagave waiting!
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brangan
February 15, 2019
“On the one hand Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga is about a wealthy family’s journey towards acceptance of their daughter’s sexuality, on the other it is a powerful negotiation of a woman’s sexual desire within the space of a highly patriarchal and small-town family in India. The story of acceptance, sadly, nearly overwhelms Sweety’s (played by Sonam Kapoor) negotiation of her desires.”
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ek-ladki-ko-dekha-toh-kya-hua-coming-out-in-the-age-of-mainstreaming-same-sex-desires-6085961.html/
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