Bollywood Baatein: ‘Badhai Do’- LGBTQ genre has finally arrived

At last, a mainstream Hindi commercial film that neither mocks nor patronizes the LGBTQ community. These were my thoughts after seeing Harshvardhan Kulkarni’s Badhai Do.

Badhai do, indeed. This calls for congratulations. After what they did to the community in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan.

This remarkably light-hearted film on a very sad lavender marriage couldn’t have been easy to make. There is so much to be said about the tragic misrepresentation and gross neglect of the gay community. And really, the audience is not in the mood to be tutored about how LGBTQ community deserves to be treated.

So here’s what director Harshvardhan Kulkarni and his talented writers Suman Adhikary and Akshat Ghildial have done: they have brought in an army of prejudiced opinions into play and then put them in a non-preachy engaging agreeable charming perspective without getting over-cute.

And though the film could have been better edited, it succeeds in doing what no other mainstream Hindi film has done: it confers a dignity and credibility to the LGBTQ community without getting hysterical or self-righteous.

The tone remains stubbornly ebullient, though not at the cost of blow-drying the complex emotions for easy consumption. The vast cast is fully clued in to the tricks of the trek. The 180-minute journey is not without its hiccups. But the principal actors, the very exceptional Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar, not to mention a supporting cast of immensely intuitive skilled players imbue the main conflict with a bedroom of conviction.

One of the film’s many charms is the supporting cast of partially unexposed faces standing in as the intrusive family: why isn’t Shardul (Rao) getting married, when he does get married why isn’t Sumi (Pednekar) getting pregnant, and who is that North-Eastern girl living with Shardul and Sumi? Chum Darang as Jhilmil, Sumi’s girlfriend is one of those many fresh faces that lend a vitality and vivacity to this mellow drama of a marriage of tragic compromise.

Rajkummar Rao’s coming-out sequence will be recalled for years as a turning point in Bollywood’s uneasy relationship with the gay community. Yes, Hindi cinema on sexual themes finally seems to be attaining puberty.

Badhai Do reminded me of three other films from three parts of the world which give dignity to the gay community without patting themselves on their backs. Heidi Ewing’s I Carry You With Me in Spanish is a hugely lauded Mexican film about two men who hide their mutual love for decades. It is an epic love story.

Geetu Mohandas’s Mothoon in Malayalam is a far better look at repressed same-sex love. In her sophomore film, director Geetu Mohandas (whose debut film Liars Dice is an undiscovered gem) has actually yoked two films together into a work of stunning impact.

Michael Mayer’s Single All The Way is a blink into pink. Normally, in a film about gay couples the problem is that one of the two persons in the relationship doesn’t want to come out, or one of the two persons sharing a gay relationship takes his partner to meet his family without telling them about the true nature of their relationship.

The problem in the delightful Single All The Way is that there is no problem. The film is smart smooth and sexy. The performances are not constructed to win Oscars. But the actors love their characters.

Single All The Way breaks a ceiling or two while doing its own variation on the thorny issue of gay relationships and their acceptance within the family fold..

Hopefully we will see more films soon which normalize rather than trivialize or worse, patronize gay relationships.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)