Out of the box

Johnson Thomas

A follow-up anthology to Bombay Talkies with the same four directors, this film, a combination of stories, delves deep into lust as a psychological force producing intense desire. The treatment here is neither romantic nor erotic. It’s basically about how sex invariably becomes the tool for liberation from constricting societal edicts. 

Radhika Apte plays a 30 something professor professing to be a free thinking individual in an open marriage, who ends up becoming a sexual predator to the young student (Akash Thosar) she ends up sleeping with. Of course what she talks about and what she does are two different things altogether. There’s an unhinged quality to her behaviour thereafter and the confusion only increases with her impromptu confessions to the camera. Despite the irritating justifications, Radhika Apte manages to evoke some empathy and understanding in this Anuraag Kashyap directed short.

Zoya Akhtar comes out of her gilded cage to delineate opportunism as the underlining facet of the middle-class value system. This short opens with Neil Bhoopalam and Bhumi Pednekar (who plays his housemaid) in a playful sexual encounter. After that, it’s back to work. She does the chores and moves on to the next house while he goes about his regular routine, and has his parents home for a meeting with a prospective bride. The marriage is fixed and the maid’s bottled up feelings stoke up the contrast. 

Zoya Akhtar displays a rare sensitivity while handling this rather stereotyped sexual encounter. It’s stark, real and speaks volumes despite the understatement.  

Dibakar Banerjee’s short has Reena (a ravishing and svelte Manisha Koirala) in bed with her hubby’s (Sanjay Kapoor) best friend (a rather wooden Jaideep Ahlawat). The tryst does not end in a melodramatic twist—rather, as a mature, understated reiteration of marriage as a license to possess rather than to care or cherish. Manisha Koirala keeps you riveted and interested.  

Karan Johar's short displays the wit and humour that has become the director’s calling card. He is, of course, far more adventurous here than he is with his mainstream productions. In a highly entertaining and invigorating parody of his own audience-pleasing work, he adds lustre and lust to a story about a young school teacher (Kiara Advani) and her tryst with marriage (Vicky Kaushal as her husband). Should she repress her inner desires and resign herself to her husband’s inept, selfish and clumsy efforts at copulation or should she take matters into her own hands? Well, the answer is a rather resounding slap in the face of conventionalism and kicks the Victorian puritanical value system into the dustbin of posterity.

The four accomplished directors have literally cracked open the rigid constructs that hitherto governed sexual behaviour. The war against repressive customs and stereotyped expectations has begun in earnest, so-to-speak!