Not just eye-candy

There is a persistent belief in the Hindi movie industry that women-oriented films don't work. Yet, looking at some films in the 2000s, there are enough strong roles for women to question that belief.

By Deepa Gahlot

Dor (2006)

Nagesh Kukunoor's film took a delicate look at the bonding between two very different women. The independent and wilful Himachali Muslim woman Zeenat (Gul Panag) travels to Rajasthan to look for Meera (Ayesha Takia), whose husband is accidentally killed by Zeenat's husband in Saudi Arabia. Zeenat’s husband faces a death sentence, but under Saudi law the convict won't be hanged if the widow agrees to pardon the culprit. So Zeenat heads off on a mission to save her husband’s life.

Zeenat is shocked by Meera's condition as a widow in a traditional society and does not have the courage to ask her the favour. But Zeenat instills in Meera courage and a zest for life that she had lost with the death of her husband. The genuine friendship between the two young women transcends their backgrounds and religious differences. The simple and beautiful portrayal of the bond between two women is a departure from standard Bollywood fare that usually concentrates on male bonding

Page 3 (2005)

Madhur Bhandarkar is known for his strong female characters in adverse circumstances (Corporate, Satta, Chandni Bar). In Page 3, he told the story of the dumbing down of the media and the rise of the vacuous Page 3 culture, through the eyes of a woman reporter Madhavi (Konkona Sen Sharma). Mainstream Hindi cinema seldom looks at the life of a career woman, and in this film Madhavi's two roommates are also ambitious working girls.

The story does not end too well for any of the three, but at least Bhandarkar was willing to see contemporary urban life from the point of view of young women outside of the safety of the family structure. The air-hostess Pearl (Sandhya Mridul) and aspiring actress Gayatri (Tara Sharma) compromise on their principles and are unapologetic about it. Madhavi also goes through a crisis but emerges with her values intact.

Murder (2004)

His Indian remake of Unfaithful by Anurag Basu did two things — brought female adultery out of the closet and started a short trend of sex films, in which, obviously, the female body needed to be displayed and that gave a little power to the actress willing to drop her clothes. Mallika Sherawat became a star after she played the lonely Simran who is neglected by her busy husband and goes on to have an affair with an old flame (Emraan Hashmi).

The sex scenes were shot with an openness not seen before in Hindi films. Simran is quite unrepentant about the affair till the lover starts getting obsessive and the husband sets a detective on her trail. Of course, the Indian wife returns safely to the family fold after the lover is killed. But she does step out and, for a while, seeks companionship and pleasure for herself and hopefully changes her life for the better.

Jism (2003)

Having a leading lady as a sexual predator is not all that common in popular cinema. In Amit Saxena's remake of Double Indemnity and Body Heat, the sexy Sonia (Bipasha Basu) picks up the idle Kabir (John Abraham), seduces him and has him in her thrall, while she plots to get the lover to kill her husband (Gulshan Grover) for his wealth. It isn't often that the female in a film, and the 'heroine' at that, makes use of her body to get what she wants. With the power of her sexuality, she has men do her bidding. Her complex plan to use and dump Kabir fails, with tragic consequences. Bollywood hardly ever lets its heroines have beauty, brains and sex appeal, but Bipasha Basu broke the mould.

Filhaal (2002)

It’s not really the best film to hold up as an example of feminist ideals, but it was made by a woman and was about women, which makes it stand out in male-centric Hindi cinema.

Meghna Gulzar, with a fair amount of sensitivity, told the story of two friends Rewa (Tabu) and Sia (Sushmita Sen). When Rewa loses her child and is told she will never be a mother, she goes into depression till Sia offers to be a surrogate mother for her child. When Sia gets pregnant, emotional problems surface between the two women and the men in their lives. Meghna Gulzar took up a too obviously female subject like motherhood and gave it a slightly old-fashioned treatment. But her touches showed in the way she dealt with urban relationships and lifestyles, and female bonding, which is not so common in Hindi films.

Lajja (2001)

Rajkumar Santoshi comes from the world of hardcore commercial cinema, and had been making macho films like Ghayal and Ghatak -- even his female-centric film Damini had the heroine depending on strong male shoulders. So it came as a pleasant surprise when he decided to make a film about the modern woman in Lajja. He named his female protagonists (Rekha, Madhuri Dixit, Manisha Koirala, Mahima Chaudhary) after various variations of Sita and depicted their fight against problems like dowry, rape and domestic violence. The intention was fine, but all the women needed men to give them a hand in the fight, and so the film did not exactly create any ripples. But still, it was different from most mainstream Hindi films that don't even give women independent identities.

Astitva (2000)

Mahesh Manjrekar's film was a stab at feminism that fell under the weight of its own self-righteousness, but it touched upon various issues in a man-woman relationship. Aditi Pandit (Tabu) is happily married to Shreekant (Sachin Khedekar) for 27 years, and has a son who is about to marry his girlfriend. Then suddenly Aditi receives news that her old music teacher has left her his large estate in his will. The husband is puzzled and suspicious and it is revealed that it was a one-night stand with the teacher that had resulted in Aditi's pregnancy. Aditi has to put up with her husband’s rage and even her son's contempt, till she decides to leave him and goes off with her sympathetic would-be daughter-in-law (Namrata Shirodkar). Aditi's constant subservience and sudden awakening is not very convincing, and the story ends where it should have begun — of a middle-aged woman starting life afresh in a conservative society. But when there are so few films with female protagonists, this one had to be added to the meagre list.