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CINEMA:
ROMANCE
Ready
for the Raunchy
Love
stories have moved away from airy innocence to daring depictions, highlighting
lust and longing
By
Anupama Chopra
 The
story so far ... Boy meets girl. Boy and girl, clad in designer togs (preferably
DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger or Polo) sing songs in foreign lands (preferably
England, Switzerland, New Zealand). It's all smooching, no sex. Boy and
girl part over some suitably trivial plot turn. Boy and girl are reunited.
They live happily ever after.
Now try
this for a change ...
Boy meets
girl. Except that boy is a married prince and the girl a divorcee mother.
Film: Zubeida.
Boy meets
girl. Boy and girl make love. Girl wonders whether the boy now thinks
she is immoral. Film: Kasoor.
Boy meets
girl. Girl is forcibly married to older man. Boy drowns his sorrows in
alcohol and finally dies on the girl's doorstep. Film: Devdas.
 Lust.
Betrayal. Insecurity. Jealousy. Heartbreak. In the 1990s, none of these
emotions made much screen time. The box office, and Bollywood, preferred
popcorn romances guaranteed to send the audiences home smiling. But contrary
to what the Chopras-Yash and Aditya-might tell you, all love isn't wart-free.
And though a decade of love-lite has not jaded viewers-Yashraj's latest,
Mohabbatein, is a hit-some filmmakers are breaking the froth formula.
They are daring to examine the blemishes in romance. Love in the new year
promises to have an edge. And if the directors get it right, it will be
both compelling and entertaining.
Shyam Benegal
and "lyrical romance" don't normally go together but that is
how the art-house auteur describes his latest film, Zubeida. A period
romance, starring Karisma Kapoor, Rekha and Manoj Bajpai, Zubeida is the
story of a young girl from an affluent Muslim household. When her father,
a studio owner, discovers that his daughter has signed a film, he forces
her into a disastrous marriage. But a divorce and baby later, Zubeida
meets her life's true love, a Rajasthani prince. Only trouble is he is
already married. "What is love all about?" Benegal asks. "what
is commitment? Zubeida explores these areas. And in the process of defining
love, the film tells you something about human beings."
While Zubeida
is set in the early 1950s, Kasoor examines contemporary urban lust. Director
Vikram Bhatt, who hit big-time with Ghulam, experiments with a medium-budget
thriller. "Love is a selfish emotion," Bhatt says, "it's
self driven. When you start with that perspective, you won't make a candy-floss
story." So Kasoor traces the relationship between a newspaper editor
who may or may not have killed his wife and the lawyer who defends him.
Since the lawyer is played by the luscious Lisa Ray, lust is a foregone
conclusion. In Kasoor, the love story begins after the couple has become
intimate. Says Bhatt: "Today, most relationships are not a man and
woman discovering love for the first time. This is more real."
Bhatthas
pared his budget but director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is dabbling in a Rs
25 crore experiment. Rumoured to be one of the most expensive Hindi films
ever made, Bhansali's remake of the classic Devdas will either seal his
reputation as a master filmmaker or prove him to be a man out of touch.
Bollywood pundits were agog when Bhansali, basking in the commercial and
critical success of Hum dil de chuke sanam, chose to retell Devdas. And
despite a formidable cast-Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai
and Jackie Shroff-Bollywood's number-crunchers wonder how a contemporary
audience, used to bicep-flexing loverboys and bustier-clad Lolitas, will
take to this tragic story of unrequited love.
"I
haven't seen a good film on relationships since Arth," says filmmaker
Ram Gopal Varma who is hoping that his latest production Pyar tune kya
kiya (PTKK) will bridge the gap. Produced by Varma and directed by ad
filmmaker Rajat Mukherjee, PTKK is the story of a happily married fashion
photographer whose penchant for flirting proves fatal. Varma put PTKK
together because Mukherjee's screenplay was riveting. Says Varma: "How
much do a man and a woman really know each other? A stray comment can
cast a shadow on a relationship. PTKK is about how fragile love is."
In Paanch,
director Anurag Kashyap's tale of how a grunge-style rock group gets embroiled
in crime, love remains unrequited. The romance between a young boy and
the heroine, a headstrong, brash girl who sleeps with whoever she fancies,
remains one-sided till the end. Another debutant director, Farhan Akhtar,
son of celebrated writers Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, is currently making
Dil Chahta Hai. While Farhan and his mega-watt cast-Aamir Khan, Saif Ali
Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Preity Zinta-have been tight-lipped about the story,
the grapevine buzzes that the film is about a younger man-older woman
romance. Dimple Kapadia returns to the screen with Farhan's film. And
director-cinematographer Santosh Sivan, who wowed audiences with The Terrorist,
is making the ultimate love story with a difference: Ashoka the Great.
The period drama explores the romance between the emperor, played by Shah
Rukh Khan and the princess of Mithila, played by Kareena Kapoor.
Clearly
these films don't subscribe to the Yashraj school of chiffon-and-champagne
romance. Traditionally, a frothy love story with lilting music would hit
the mark every three of four years-think Bobby, Qayamat se qayamat tak,
Maine pyaar kiya-but in the 1990s, the genre seems to have consumed Bollywood.
Varma ascribes it to the audio industry. With audio rights selling for
as much as Rs 9 to Rs10 crore, foot-tapping love songs have become as
necessary as a plot. Says Varma: "Seventy per cent of the audio companies
are directly or indirectly responsible for filmmakers choosing these subjects.
Nice, romantic love songs puts you in the trap of doing the same thing
over and over again." But the audience isn't tiring of it either.
Kaho naa pyaar hai, the biggest hit of 2000, had all the requisite ingredients:
mega locations, music and brand-name togs. So had Mohabbatein. Benegal
calls them "wish-fulfilment romances". As he puts it, "Today's
teenagers are not discovering life with the same kind of innocence as
before. These films are catering to an area that has been lost."
Bhatt agrees: "It depends on what kind of dream you want to sell.
A filmmaker can extract two kinds of reactions, 'I wish it were' or 'It
really is'. These films work because they are a fairy tale for adults."
Naturally
then, nobody is expecting a radical change in attitude from either the
industry or the audience. "We can only hope to co-exist," says
Kashyap pragmatically. Indeed, if the box office is benevolent, love-with-an-edge
might also find a place in the sun. Because as the PTKK tag line puts
it: Love stories are not always pleasant.
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