Filmography
Feb. 14th, 2007 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyPhir Milenge
Following all the hoo-hah about Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother House, I realised I was being a bit of a narrow minded madam by shaking my head along with the general horror at what was happening, but had absolutely no idea who Shilpa Shetty was or indeed if she was, as an actress, any good. So this week's attempt to be all multicultural and generally bother to follow up stuff which comes my way was to watch Phir Milenge, my first proper Bollywood film and also the one which is considered to have been the first big starring number in Shetty's career.
The plot is essentially a rewriting of Philadelphia,, if anyone is familiar with it. Tamanna, a successful young advertising creative director (Shetty) takes leave to go back to celebrate the birthday of the guru at her old school. When there, she meets her old flame Rohit, who she fancied all through school and told of her affections. They make up for lost time. Tamanna returns to the city, works v. hard for seven months on an advertising campaign, copes with her sister being in hospital. Apparently it is policy that if you make a hospital use blood for transfusions and so forth, you have to replace the blood personally. Tamanna happens to be the right blood type so goes to donate. She donates, and is summoned back to be told that she has HIV. Her boss fires her, without really giving her anything approaching fair warning, essentially for having HIV. Tamanna gets her case taken to court, having problems finding a lawyer until the charismatic Tarun takes it up. They fail in the civil court and win in the High Court. Rohit turns up, apparently having had no idea he was HIV until it was far too late, and dies in the last five minutes. Zoom forward to 'two years later', when Tamanna has her own business, Tarun's fiancee is pregnant, and everything seems a bit more right with the world.
Obviously, as far as the Bollywood film conventions go, I am woefully ignorant, so a lot of the finer points of body language passed me by completely. There was, however, a lot of stuff brought to the surface here about the level of ignorance that still exists in India about HIV (the film was made in 2004) - as far as public education goes, it was pretty darn effective, and I hope that a lot of the myths that were brought to the surface there were properly exploded in a sufficiently large proportion of the viewing public. There was a particularly good touch in making Tarun have a huge issue with Tamanna's HIV until he worked through his fear and realised that he could, for instance, comfort her while she was in a great hysterical teary fit after seeing Rohit with AIDS for the first time without putting his own health in danger.
There's also some good social commentary about who one's true friends are - for instance Tamanna's sister sticks to her like glue, and Tarun comes to be her friend, but her erst-while boss with whom she founded the advertising firm drops her as soon as he hears about the HIV. The element of 'it reflects on character' is clearly undermined, as Tamanna is theoretically dismissed for incompetence but has been portrayed as working her heels off as much as possible. Her love for Rohit was this long-simmering-long-lasting pash thingie, not a one-night stand. Although when he admits to having a woman in his life who had nine other men friends at the same time, you would have thought she might have considered some form of protection. Ho hum.
My point was to see what Ms Shetty was like as an actress, and actually, I think she was pretty darn good. The sense I get is that Bollywood acting is somewhat like cartooning, in that it is rather stylised and depends on a stock of typical gestures and portrayals. If so, Shetty actually manages not only to use the whole range of them, but also to actually make them look as if they're genuine. It would be so easy to see such a ritualised acting style as emotionless, but Shetty and her co-actors actually do put a good heft into it.
That said, it's far too long, some elements of the plot are more than a little moth-eaten, and I sincerely doubt I'll be putting many more Bollywood films on my Netflix list - but I'm glad I bothered to make the effort. Four stars.
Following all the hoo-hah about Shilpa Shetty in the Big Brother House, I realised I was being a bit of a narrow minded madam by shaking my head along with the general horror at what was happening, but had absolutely no idea who Shilpa Shetty was or indeed if she was, as an actress, any good. So this week's attempt to be all multicultural and generally bother to follow up stuff which comes my way was to watch Phir Milenge, my first proper Bollywood film and also the one which is considered to have been the first big starring number in Shetty's career.
The plot is essentially a rewriting of Philadelphia,, if anyone is familiar with it. Tamanna, a successful young advertising creative director (Shetty) takes leave to go back to celebrate the birthday of the guru at her old school. When there, she meets her old flame Rohit, who she fancied all through school and told of her affections. They make up for lost time. Tamanna returns to the city, works v. hard for seven months on an advertising campaign, copes with her sister being in hospital. Apparently it is policy that if you make a hospital use blood for transfusions and so forth, you have to replace the blood personally. Tamanna happens to be the right blood type so goes to donate. She donates, and is summoned back to be told that she has HIV. Her boss fires her, without really giving her anything approaching fair warning, essentially for having HIV. Tamanna gets her case taken to court, having problems finding a lawyer until the charismatic Tarun takes it up. They fail in the civil court and win in the High Court. Rohit turns up, apparently having had no idea he was HIV until it was far too late, and dies in the last five minutes. Zoom forward to 'two years later', when Tamanna has her own business, Tarun's fiancee is pregnant, and everything seems a bit more right with the world.
Obviously, as far as the Bollywood film conventions go, I am woefully ignorant, so a lot of the finer points of body language passed me by completely. There was, however, a lot of stuff brought to the surface here about the level of ignorance that still exists in India about HIV (the film was made in 2004) - as far as public education goes, it was pretty darn effective, and I hope that a lot of the myths that were brought to the surface there were properly exploded in a sufficiently large proportion of the viewing public. There was a particularly good touch in making Tarun have a huge issue with Tamanna's HIV until he worked through his fear and realised that he could, for instance, comfort her while she was in a great hysterical teary fit after seeing Rohit with AIDS for the first time without putting his own health in danger.
There's also some good social commentary about who one's true friends are - for instance Tamanna's sister sticks to her like glue, and Tarun comes to be her friend, but her erst-while boss with whom she founded the advertising firm drops her as soon as he hears about the HIV. The element of 'it reflects on character' is clearly undermined, as Tamanna is theoretically dismissed for incompetence but has been portrayed as working her heels off as much as possible. Her love for Rohit was this long-simmering-long-lasting pash thingie, not a one-night stand. Although when he admits to having a woman in his life who had nine other men friends at the same time, you would have thought she might have considered some form of protection. Ho hum.
My point was to see what Ms Shetty was like as an actress, and actually, I think she was pretty darn good. The sense I get is that Bollywood acting is somewhat like cartooning, in that it is rather stylised and depends on a stock of typical gestures and portrayals. If so, Shetty actually manages not only to use the whole range of them, but also to actually make them look as if they're genuine. It would be so easy to see such a ritualised acting style as emotionless, but Shetty and her co-actors actually do put a good heft into it.
That said, it's far too long, some elements of the plot are more than a little moth-eaten, and I sincerely doubt I'll be putting many more Bollywood films on my Netflix list - but I'm glad I bothered to make the effort. Four stars.
