Femininity as performance: Konkona Sen Sharma

Konkona Sen Sharma has quickly become an Exotic and Irrational favorite. She first came to our attention in Aaja Nachle (2007), where she played the distinctly unglamorous Anokhi. Anokhi is a tomboyish village girl who is trying to get Kunal Kapoor's Imran to notice her; when they are cast as the legendary lovers Laila and Majnu in the theatrical show that Madhuri Dixit's Dia is directing, Anokhi has her chance.

Even without English subtitles, the dynamics among the characters and the shifts between the film's reality and the characters' fantasies in Aaja Nachle's "Ishq Hua" should be pretty clear. That's Vinay Pathak and Sushmita Mukherjee as the older couple, and Ranvir Shorey dancing with Madhuri in his character's fantasy (music by Salim-Suleiman; directed by Anil Mehta):

Under the tutelage of the older, more experienced (and divorced) Dia, Anokhi learns that the way to a man's heart is to glam up, flirt, and become more feminine. By making a parallel between Anokhi's role in the show and her adoption of a more girlish personal style, the movie is suggesting—perhaps not inadvertently—that femininity is a performance.

And this isn't the only Konkona movie that makes that suggestion. In Life in a...Metro, Konkona plays Shruti, as a woman we are supposed to see (at least initially) as exaggeratedly severe; it's only after she gets some girl-to-girl advice about her appearance and demeanor that she begins to get some (initially unwanted) attention from Irrfan Khan's Monty. It's a measure of how good she is as an actress that the striking Konkona is so convincing as these supposedly unattractive women.

Incidentally, both movies also suggest that men are crude and self-centered until love allows them to let down their emotional guard a little. In other words, masculinity is also a performance—or to put it another way, an act.

In addition to (or sometimes along with) the ugly duckling who becomes a swan, Konkona also often plays young women beginning to make their way in the big city. Her characters, with the same mixed success as the rest of us, are seeking not only love, but creative fulfillment in their work. In Page 3 (2005), she plays a naïve journalist who realizes too late that she's become a part of the empty-celebrity machine; in Luck By Chance (2009), she plays an aspiring actress who discovers that talent and ambition aren't all that's required for Bollywood success; and in Wake Up Sid (2009), she plays a young writer who eventually lands a column in a hip nightlife magazine as the "New Girl in the City." Konkona's sympathetic performances are the best thing about all three of these movies.

Here she shows Aisha's recognition of her growing love for Ranbir Kapoor's Sid in Wake Up Sid's lovely "Iktara" (music by Shankar-Eshaan-Loy, lyrics by Javed Akhtar; directed by Ayan Mukherjee):

After Wake Up Sid, which was very successful both critically and commercially, Konkona may have felt that she was finished for the time being with "new girl in the city" roles. Certainly her current projects seem to involve very different kinds of characters. We haven't seen Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge or Right Ya Wrong (both 2010)—neither slapstick comedy nor suspense thrillers (Hitchcock aside) are favorite E & I genres. We are, though, looking forward to Iti Mrinalini (announced for a June 2010 release), Konkona's reunion with her mother Aparna Sen, who wrote and directed Konkona's breakthrough Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002).

Three love problems: George Eliot's Middlemarch

"...men know best about everything, except what women know better."

—Celia Brooke to her sister Dorothea

George Eliot's Middlemarch is irresistibly quotable. One reason is that its characters are so fully realized that readers will recognize in them their neighbors, relatives and friends—and especially, parts of themselves that usually remain unacknowledged. Eliot set out to make "a study of provincial life," as her subtitle has it. She peopled her fictional village with a memorable cast of characters viewed with an affectionate but critical eye and depicted with an almost painful psychological acuity. But the frailties and failings she depicts in her early 19th-century characters are so familiar that they seem very modern—or, perhaps, as ancient as human society itself. (Image of the first edition of Middlemarch from earlywomenmasters.net)

At the center of the novel are the "three love problems" that provide the title for the fourth of Middlemarch's eight books. The first love problem is that of Dorothea Brooke, who wants to give herself passionately to important social and intellectual projects. All too aware that the prospects for such great endeavors are sadly limited in Middlemarch, the youthful Dorothea thinks she has found her soulmate in Edward Casaubon, a "formal studious man thirty years older than herself." Casaubon has spent decades doing research for a work he calls "The Key to All Mythologies," a work that Dorothea wants dedicate herself to bringing to fruition. But is Mr. Casaubon truly the "great soul" that Dorothea ardently imagines him to be? And should Casaubon's poor young cousin Will Ladislaw disabuse Dorothea of those notions, or would that be entirely self-serving, since he's falling in love with her himself?

The second love problem belongs to Fred Vincy, the son of a local manufacturer, who wants to marry his childhood sweetheart Mary Garth, daughter of a local estate manager. She very intelligently refuses him, however, because he has no purpose in life other than the pleasures of billiards, gambling, and hunting. In the first half of the novel we follow Fred's hapless attempts to clear himself of a debt, and his disastrous entanglement of Mary's family in his money problems—which of course, just sinks Fred lower in Mary's estimation. Fred pins his hopes for escaping debt and becoming worthy of Mary on an expected inheritance from his childless uncle, the miserly and sadistic Peter Featherstone—but will that inheritance really materialize?

The third love problem is that of Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy, Fred's sister. Rosamond is the town beauty, and knows it. She wants a husband who will provide her with a life full of grace, charm, and beautiful things, preferably someplace other than Middlemarch. Lydgate is a crusading young doctor who has come to Middlemarch to showcase some new medical ideas, and Rosamond builds a fantasy world around this dashing outsider. Lydgate has decided, though, that as much as he enjoys flirting with Rosamond he's not yet ready to get married; he hopes to establish himself professionally first. But Rosamond usually gets what she wants—only, is what she wants what either she or Lydgate truly need?

In her wonderful essay "Middlemarch and Everybody" (from the collection Changing My Mind (Penguin, 2009)), Zadie Smith writes of the importance for Eliot of the moment that "the scales fall from our eyes," the moment that our self-deceptions become glaringly apparent to ourselves. Making this process even more agonizing, though, is that there are usually several layers of self-deception that have to be painfully peeled away, one by one. Of course, coming to understand that the world and other people do not match our fantasies, and learning to see them (to the extent we're able) as they are, is an essential part of growing up. But that doesn't make it less distressing, or less dangerous to our capacity to give ourselves wholly to life and to love. As Eliot writes, "To have in general but little feeling seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion." (Image of George Eliot from womenshistory.about.com)

This is why Virginia Woolf famously called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people": its subject is the compromises, sacrifices and disappointments of adulthood, and particularly of married life. I'd disagree with Woolf—I think Jane Austen's novels, for example, are best appreciated by people who have experienced some romantic disappointment in their lives. It's true, though, that Austen's novels typically lead her characters up to the moment of engagement and marriage, but don't go much beyond that point. The difficulty of getting that far puts the lovers to a test which, as Austen assures us of Northanger Abbey's Henry and Catherine, "so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment." But Austen's novels end just when the couples' lives together are truly beginning. (In its final moments, the superb 1995 film version of Persuasion gives us the equivalent of one of Austen's brief post-ceremony codas with a vision of Captain Wentworth and Anne sharing the sort of wonderfully companionate marriage that we've seen earlier with Admiral and Mrs. Croft.) George Eliot, on the other hand, follows her couples unsparingly after marriage, through their misunderstandings, disagreements and trials both small and large.

And that we may ultimately be disillusioned in our partners and ourselves is not, for Eliot, so much a tragedy as a necessity. "For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it," she writes. In a flawed world we ourselves are necessarily flawed, and to recognize our imperfections is just the beginning of compassion and wisdom.

Love Aaj Kal

Love Aaj Kal (Love These Days, 2009) has appealing actors (Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rishi Kapoor in his avuncular uncle mode) and spectacular locations: London, Delhi, Kolkata, San Francisco. It does, though, have a few minor flaws: the direction, the editing, and the story.

First, a brief synopsis: Jai (Saif) and Meera (Deepika) are desis living in London who hook up after a night of clubbing and soon move in with one another. Both are apparently skeptical of deeper emotional commitment, though--Jai openly ridicules the idea--and when a couple of years later Meera gets her dream job restoring temple paintings in India, the couple agree to break up with no hard feelings. Jai's friend Veer (Rishi), an older man who runs a London cafe, can't believe that Jai is so willing to let Meera go, and tells Jai the story of his love for a young woman named Harleen (Giselli Monteiro) in the India of a generation ago. The two stories intertwine, with modern mores--the ease of sex and the difficulties of commitment--contrasting with those in Veer's time.

But the multiple flashbacks and shifts in location are presented confusingly by director Imtiaz Ali. (I don't think it's me: I had no difficulty following the multiple flashbacks and flash-forwards in Shyam Benegal's masterful Bhumika, (1976), for example). It doesn't help that Saif plays a double role (as Jai and the young Veer) while Deepika doesn't. In an apparent attempt to help us out by signalling the time-shifts, some of the scenes from Veer story are given a sepia tone. Thinking about the chronology, though, the Veer-Harleen story must be taking place in the mid-70s; somehow I don't think of the 70s as being a particularly sepia decade. Even granting this choice, it's applied inconsistently, sometimes leaving us floundering for a few moments before we're sure of where and when the scene is supposed to be taking place.

This is true even in the present-day sections. There's a moment in the script when Meera talks about her imminent trip to India, while Jai mentions his desire to go to San Francisco. The next shot is from the point of view of a car driving down an urban street. Are we in Delhi? San Francisco? No--we're still in London, as it takes us a few seconds to realize. The movie is filled with moments like this--either an expected jump in time or location that doesn't happen, or an unprepared cut that vaults us to a different time and/or place without our realizing it at first. I don't remember Ali's Jab We Met (2007) having this problem. That was a more linear story, though; the task of keeping Love Aaj Kal's intertwined narrative threads from getting tangled seems to have defeated him.

As writer and director, Ali has to take the blame for this, but it's also true that Aarti Bajaj's editing is at times simply incompetent. There's a scene where we see Meera dancing with her new boyfriend Vikram (Rahul Khanna). The camera is placed behind Vikram, shooting over his shoulder at Meera's smiling face. The very next shot is of Vikram walking towards the camera carrying a couple of drinks. By the conventions of continuity editing, it appears that he is walking towards himself. This is the sort of mistake that shouldn't happen in a student film, much less a slick commercial product like this one.

And how hard can it be to make Deepika Padukone look good? Too hard for the three credited costumers, apparently--Deepika keeps winding up in unflattering, cheap-looking outfits.

But Deepika's dumpy clothes, the confusing direction and poor editing would be insignificant if the story were compelling, or even made sense. Spoilers follow: Jai and Meera live together for three years, but never have The Talk about commitment? (At least an unmarried couple living together is treated in a matter-of-fact way: no one has to get pregnant, commit suicide or contract a terminal disease.) Meera doesn't realize until the morning after her wedding to another man that she's still in love with Jai? She then does nothing about this realization except disappear into her work? Jai doesn't realize until he's beaten up in San Francisco a year later that he loves Meera? And this is supposed to be a great love story? Sorry--love overcoming obstacles is indeed a classic story line, but the obstacles have to be something other than the couple's willful disconnection from their own feelings.

--End of spoilers--

Love Aaj Kal was a big hit, so apparently it struck a chord with many viewers. And it's not a total loss. Saif and Deepika acquit themselves honorably even if their characters are seriously underwritten (this is getting to be a problem for Deepika--see also Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008)). If the present-day story is nonsensical, the Veer-Harleen story is charming, as is its narrator Rishi (and it culminates in the brief onscreen reunion of a famous jodi).

The Veer-Harleen story also gives us the one compelling song in the movie, "Thoda Thoda Pyar" (music by Pritam, lyrics by Irshad Kamil). Harleen, dancing at an engagement party, sings about the pesky boy who keeps pursuing her, simultaneously signaling to him that "a little bit of love" for him has entered her heart. It's the sort of clever, charming and multilayered scene that Love Aaj Kal could have used a lot more of:

Bhumika

Shyam Benegal's Bhumika (The Role, 1977), like his later Zubeidaa (2001), is about the plight of women in a society where men wield all the power.

Usha is the only child of an impoverished couple. Her father lies in bed unable to work, and so the burden of supporting the family falls on Usha's mother Shanta (Sulabha Deshpande), who is trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Usha's grandmother, a singer, nourishes the growing talents of the young girl, and she is spotted by her predatory neighbor Keshav (Amol Palekar), who has connections in the film industry.

After an audition with a producer, the precocious Usha is indeed hired as a playback singer; some years later, as a young woman (now played by Smita Patil), she becomes a actress. Happiness remains elusive, though--not only do we see the hard, repetitive work involved in filming, we see Usha engaging in a series of troubled relationships with men. Each new relationship holds out the promise of love and freedom, only to wind up in disappointment, bitterness, and confinement (either figurative or literal). Usha can seemingly never escape the roles that others define for her.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards. Scenes in the movie's present are in color, while the flashbacks are in black and white. Apart from the film stock and the aging of the characters, we are given cues to the passage of time in occasional snatches of news on the radio, which place the action between the early 1940s and the early 1960s. But the momentous historical events that we hear announced in the background have no direct impact on the lives of the characters; one of the flash-forwards skips right over the moment of India's independence, for example. Instead the focus of the film remains--like its heroine--claustrophobically confined.

Smita Patil gives an extraordinary performance as Usha, who (like Zubeidaa) is far from a perfect heroine: she is thoughtless at times, makes poor choices (from, of course, very limited alternatives), and ultimately abandons her daughter to her parasitic, resentful husband. But throughout Patil makes Usha sympathetic in her pain, anger and confusion. She eloquently expresses the toll exacted by Usha's unfulfilled desires for freedom and for true companionship. Patil is very ably supported by Deshpande, Palekar, and by the actors playing the men with whom she has her unhappy affairs: Anant Nag, Naseeruddin Shah, and Amrish Puri.

Other striking aspects of Bhumika are Benegal's beautifully composed images (and adept suggestion of vintage Bollywood style) and Vanraj Bhatia's music. The music is so good that it makes me regret that Benegal does not let us see an entire production number; instead he interrupts them, or foregrounds the technique of their creation. Both are strategies to insure that we aren't allowed to fully enter into the Bollywood fantasy, as in the opening sequence of the movie:

Together with Benegal's sensitive direction, Patil's performance makes Bhumika an indelible experience. For an appreciation that places the film in the context of 1970s parallel cinema and illuminates the film's many subtexts, see the essay posted at Philip Lutgendorf's Notes on Indian Popular Cinema.

An Education

At my bookstore we were talking about the laziness involved in comparison reviewing. Trust me: any writer hailed as "a modern-day Jane Austen" isn't. She couldn't be, even (or perhaps especially) if she were trying to be. It's the same with movies that are claimed to be "Hitchcockian"—it's a guarantee that they'll be laughably bad suspense thrillers that are neither suspenseful nor thrilling.

But there is a recent movie that has a Hitchcockian feel, at least for its first half, and not because anyone gets murdered. The writer (Nick Hornby—basing his script on Lynn Barber's memoir of her adolescence in the early 1960s)—and director (Lone Scherfig) of An Education (2009) understand the perverse dynamic of some of Hitchcock's most memorable work. In Rear Window (1954), for example, Jimmy Stewart's Jeff is a Peeping Tom who spends his days and nights spying on his neighbors. But we are quickly drawn into complicity with him; soon we're seeing his neighbor's actions through his eyes and can't wait for him to pick up his telephoto lens again. In Psycho (1960), Anthony Perkin's nerdish motel clerk Norman Bates is trying to dispose of a dead body. He places it in the trunk of the victim's car, and tries to sink the car in a swampy pond behind the motel. The car rolls into the water, tips upward, and sticks there, half exposed. In that moment we feel an sharp twinge of anxiety—for Norman!—and then a surge of relief when the car finally sinks beneath the surface. We want him to get away with it; not for the first or last time, Hitchcock has manipulated us into identifying with the wrong character.

There's a similar moment in An Education, though it doesn't involve any bodies in car trunks. David (Peter Sarsgaard), a man in his mid-30s, has been taking the 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) out to classical concerts, fine restaurants and swank jazz clubs. At first, we're suspicious—why isn't this man dating women his own age? But David is charming, reasonably handsome, flush with cash, and provides Jenny with an escape from her boring suburban life and predictable future programmed by her crassly calculating father (Alfred Molina). Despite some warning signs—not least that David is at least twice Jenny's age—we become as dazzled by Jenny's new experiences as she is.

Midway through the film, David suggests to Jenny that they go off to Oxford for a weekend with another couple. Jenny is sure that her parents, and especially her father, will object to her spending a weekend in David's company. But David bets that he can convince him, and we find ourselves on David's side, hoping that the unsympathetic father will give in. The creepiness of the situation—that we're hoping for David, a predatory older man, to succeed in maneuvering a teenaged girl into bed—only sinks in once they're on their way.

That scene in the hotel bedroom in Oxford is creepy, and along with Jenny we start to notice cracks developing in David's smooth facade. But as Jenny becomes increasingly disillusioned with David, her parents become ever more enamoured.

The best thing about An Education is the performance of Carey Mulligan as Jenny. She is utterly convincing as a 16-year-old yearning for adult sophistication, but unprepared for adult duplicity. The rest of the cast is excellent, too (and many faces—Olivia Williams, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, and brief appearances by Emma Thompson and Sally Hawkins--are familiar from Jane Austen adaptations).

Hornby's script doesn't always allow the characters a believable complexity—the father and the headmistress of Jenny's school verge on caricature and are rescued only by the actors portraying them. The script also invents some scenes and changes details of Barber's memoir both small (names have been changed, of course, and that first weekend alone together was in Wales, not Oxford) and large.

That's to be expected, of course, but one deviation from reality is particularly damaging. The school's headmistress (Thompson) is a coldly unsympathetic upholder of propriety. When she learns that Jenny's no longer a virgin, she refuses to allow her to return to school. And she's virulently anti-Semitic, as well (David is Jewish). All of that is true to Barber's memoir. In the film Jenny then seeks out her sympathetic English teacher (Williams) for private tutoring for her exams. But according to Barber's memoir, it was the headmistress who sent the teacher to her. That change only serves to make the film's headmistress seem like an ogre, instead of the confused and conflicted human being she was in reality.

An Education raises many uncomfortable questions. Among them: Is David's exploitation of Jenny redeemed to even a tiny extent by the (limited) liberation from the gray constraints of suburban life that he enables her to experience? And how would we feel if the genders were reversed? (One of my favorite operas is, after all, Der Rosenkavalier, in which a 35-year-old woman is carrying on an affair with a 17-year-old boy.)

The film also brought up some bittersweet memories of a time when I, like Jenny, rushed to embrace adulthood but was nearly overwhelmed by the emotional consequences. An Education is not a flawless work of art, but it is a well-wrought and thought-provoking film that is very much worth seeing—particularly if you recognize a part of yourself in the bright, impatient and impulsive Jenny.