The premise, at first, appears thrilling: a girl in her 50s, who doesn’t “look” like a lesbian, and positively can’t be a lesbian as imagined by her son and husband—is outed with out her consent, most problematically by her daughter Tara to legitimize her ‘straight privilege’. At first the class of lesbian is steady as Pallavi (performed by Madhuri Dixit) confesses to her daughter. But as a mom of a son who’s to be wedded to an obnoxious household, she dilutes that first assertion, “Lesbian ka matlab kya hain batayenge aap?” The writerly copout is masked as a rhetorical query that echoes all through the narrative — the movie isn’t positive both!
What made me watch the movie until the top was my curiosity for the inside lifetime of a girl who doesn’t “look queer” however may have an attention-grabbing story to inform and thereby problem my preconceptions of what a lesbian appears to be like like. In brief, the preliminary premise of the movie challenges the concept of of lesbian as “the other” sort of lady. And but, regardless of the movie utilizing the “is she a lesbian or not” curiosity to propel the plot, it pays no consideration to the story of affection between Pallavi and Kanchan (Simone Singh) — which might have been the center of the film if it was certainly a movie about lesbian need. What it’s as a substitute is a sort of apologia for a previous love, which Pallavi’s son Tejas describes in a scene of confrontation as “chakkar”. What occurs to the inside life of those girls, their guilt, their turmoil, and their jealousy– is all subsumed within the legit marriage plot between Tejas and Esha. In the writing of the movie, each girls are used as units for a sensational reveal—in contrast to a Monsoon Wedding, the place a marriage turns into a tool for uncovering the deep darkish secrets and techniques that lurk beneath the façade of glad Indian households. Here, the revelation does nothing to the establishment of the household inside which it once more goes again to being a secret ready to be uncovered.
This is the pitfall of a “reveal” somewhat than a sluggish emergence of a personality’s progress—the story is both an affidavit or a refusal thereafter. Yes, she cherished a girl, however didn’t have intercourse with a girl. At whose value are we nuancing the class of lesbian and leaving it open to interpretation? This is what occurs if the topic is a possibly-lesbian lady in a straight pondering movie — she turns into a web site for experimentation and we by no means get a peek into the journey of the character herself, her conflicts and realisations. Rather her dilemma turns into fodder for narrative titillation. What astounds and outrages is that by the top of the movie—the lady upholds the parable of the glad household but once more, at the price of us by no means figuring out what she needs, by no means as soon as refusing a contemporary model of agnipariksha within the identify of los angeles familia!
It is the best way during which we think about households and the logic of conjugality that tells the story of a previous love (who doesn’t have one?) as a secret which wants rationalization. In truth, by the top of the film the Great Indian Parivar emerges stronger and extra muscular for having withstood an unintentional disruption of outing. Even in 2022, the logic of the Indian household (whether or not it’s in India or the USA) can not deal with sexuality as a non-public alternative, however pushes it into the area of a secret that wants a confession/truth-testing.
We know that the parable of the glad household is often sustained by the labour of girls, largely unpaid. Pallavi is the best spouse—she adjusts and doesn’t complain. She pleads along with her daughter “parivar toot jayega”. However, I believed the movie had hope when Pallavi says, “Jhooth nahi bolungi, apne aap se bhi nahi”. The undeniable fact that “kya aap lesbian hain?” is an open query within the film, a sluggish regression from Pallavi’s unintentional confession to her daughter. The character’s arc doesn’t be taught something new from the journey it takes via the act of revelation.
If solely, as a substitute of asking “what is lesbian”, the movie requested “what does lesbian desire do?” or “how do we sustain women’s desires” with out pushing her again into the function and performance throughout the secure cowl of the household, I’d say this can be a film that opens up potentialities for ladies and provides to the repertoire of lesbian. Instead this can be a story that feasts on a secret, titillates its viewers and isn’t modified by the revelation. The solely character that adjustments is Tejas—thereby as soon as once more utilizing a girl to carry a few change within the central male character.
While on one hand Pallavi appears desperate to discover herself past the function of a spouse and mom, she accedes to her husband’s plea of not leaving him — falling again into arms of the loving household whose conscience will be appeased via the tablet of a pure, non-sexual, loving lesbian. The movie introduces a wierd mythological class to the world of gender and sexuality: lesbian who doesn’t upset anybody. So what if Indian straight males had wives who as soon as felt pure love in the direction of one other lady—the good Indian household forgives all sins that don’t contain intercourse.
The ending leaves me dissatisfied. It isn’t straightforward to think about the loneliness of the middle-aged lady within the nice Indian parivar, whose emotional and bodily labour is glue for it. What is Pallavi pondering? She doesn’t know if she is a lesbian, she confesses that she by no means actually desired her husband, a possible union with a previous lover is interrupted by continual sickness and we don’t even know if she had some other lover aside from Kanchan. Is this how we need to think about older center aged girls in India, devoid of need, of fantasies, particularly after having met the feisty octogenarian Mai in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand not too long ago? Do we need to think about older middle-aged girls as passive and insipid, who can not think about themselves exterior of the labour they carry out for his or her households?
Nobody who has watched Fire (1996) can overlook the scene the place the easy act of girls urgent one another’s toes is an act of tacit understanding, of defiance, of naughtiness, of play; and even in a movie like Portrait of a Lady on Fire the place glances are such highly effective visible units that the chemistry between the ladies haunts lengthy after the movie is over. Recent movies like Sheer Qorma have used Indian tropes and contexts to delve into the layered house of the home the place need can disrupt what we assume to be a given. In 2022, to neutralize need between girls via the filial, to desexualize it’s to deify girls even when the movie overtly denies it.
Maja Ma doesn’t even try and develop the complicated feelings comparable to chemistry between Kanchan and Pallavi. That the good Indian household can swallow all types of wishes throughout the folds of its mythological acceptance makes me shudder. Despite the truth that for a minute Pallavi toys with the concept of identification past the roles of mom and spouse, she falls again comfortably into her husband’s plea of not leaving him. In brief, girls’s wishes for one another don’t have any which means for social establishments?
The class of lesbian exterior this film is political, nonetheless. And hopefully, sexual too. It isn’t as ambiguous because the movie needs us to think about. It continues to be about girls who select girls in love and in life. In its aesthetics, lesbian is marked by an extra that’s tough to comprise, it’s marked by defiance and disobedience to patriarchy—components which are lacking from the movie. If the movie as soon as dared to ask “parivar kya hain samjhayenge aap” as a substitute of giving us virginal lesbians with pure ideas and as soon as once more attempting so as to add “pyaar ya sex” as retrospective nuance, I’d not see it as an try and dilute label that has been reclaimed via years of girls’s labour and activism. It is the path of a query, from the place and for whom that decides its potential to be radical.
The ending of the film doesn’t allow us to think about what else Pallavi could possibly be aside from a spouse and mom. The assimilation of the lady again into the household as her function of a spouse, somewhat than stretching the boundaries of a household and queering it’s what makes this movie a missed alternative. Queerphobia is a deep suspicion in the best way lives are led in another way from “normal” households. This movie swallows the sturdy class of “lesbian” and retains it open for hypothesis the place as, not for as soon as can we see the household interrogated—its armour and façade intact with no indicators of self reflection.
Debolina Dey identifies as queer, particularly the adjective. They educate in Ramjas College.
