Erotic thrillers as well as soft porn-corn – euphemisms for bedsheet rustle-ooh-dramas and sexist gag fests respectively – have been going under the box-office sheets, steadily but surely over the last two years.
Sunny Leone continues to tantalise via website clicks, besides commanding a turn-out larger than election rallies in August this year, on showing up in God’s own country, Cochin, Kerala, for an inauguration event. At the movies, though, the panache has run out of her pout pourris.
Don’t get me wrong though. Ms Leone is a woman who speaks her heart and mind out. She can squelch journos and TV hosts with a flick of a tweet. In addition, as an ‘item girl’, there isn’t a replacement yet for her shimmying skills, as affirmed this year in Raees and Baadshaho. Catcalls and whistles guaranteed.
It’s just that Bollywood’s peculiar (call it one-of-a-kind, if you will) sub-genre of wink-wink-nudge-nudge sex films have either migrated to the domain of web series or have been extinguished by the film production offices.
Balaji banner’s Kya Kool Hain Hum franchise masterminded by Ekta Kapoor, and Indra Kumar’s Grand Masti follow-ups are finito. Or maybe they’re resting in peace. No love’s lost for The Hate Story series. Vikram Bhatt, the prolific kiss-and-tell thriller maestro has migrated to the promised land of web series. Vishesh Films’ major domos, brothers Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, aren’t into Raaz, Murder and Jism-talk right here, right now.
More: The keys to the hyper-active liplocks of Emraan Hashmi have been thrown away. Mallika Sherawat fetches up mainly for photo-ops on the red carpet of the Cannes film festival, albeit minus the company of Jackie Chan. And Malaika Arora Khan, far too often trapped in item girl acts, embedded in public memory by Chal chhaiyya chhaiyya (Dil Se, 1998) and Munni badnaam hui (Dabangg, 2010), has switched lanes to TV reality shows.
This Friday, Sunny Leone and Arbaaz Khan teamed up in Rajeev Walia’s Tera Intezaar, a supernatural-cum-smooch startler which competed for the honour of one of the worst films of the year. Trust me, you don’t have to see it to believe me. Lamented a trade report, “The film failed miserably to pull in the audience, recording an occupancy rate of just 5 per cent.. that is likely to lead to a very poor viewership of the film in actual numbers.”
Last month, the Ananth Narayan Mahadevan-helmed Aksar 2 and the Deepak Shivdasani-piloted Julie 2 tanked, exacerbated by protests on record, by their leading ladies about the irrelevant skin exposure.
Zareen Khan of Aksar 2 has complained vehemently, “They (presumably the producers and the director) wanted me to change into irrational clothes that would make me expose... I’m not saying I don’t want to wear bikinis or do kissing scenes… It’s just that they wanted me to wear minimal clothes in every frame. Such things were just not acceptable.”
The case of Julie 2 is curiouser. It wasn’t difficult to guess that Shivdasani, who had introduced Nagma opposite Salman Khan in Baaghi: A Rebel of Love (1990), was ‘inspired’ to use fragments from the vicissitudes his debutante eventually had to face in the course of her fall from grace. Wisely, Nagma has chosen to remain silent. Raai Laxmi, the gifted actress who has featured in several south Indian films, wasn’t amused by her Bollywood debut in Julie 2, though, commenting crisply, “The sex genre is over. We have overdone it.”
As for director Shivdasani, he jetted off to Dubai for a holiday, but not before posting a guilt-ridden statement on Facebook: “Yes, my film has failed... I stand fully responsible for its content and marketing. I know I owe monies to technicians and vendors, which I promise to pay in time to all. I hope those I owe understand and be patient for a while.”
In this shuffling madness, what’s the status of Sunny Leone? There have been attempts to take over ‘the item girl’ mantle. In vain. To cite an example, Urvashi Rautela’s nightclub moves, couldn’t do much to enhance the entertainment quotient of the Hrithik Roshan showcase, Kaabil, this year.
In Leone’s capacity as a film’s heroine, trade vigilantes point out that apart from MMS Ragini 2, which earned her the ‘Baby Doll’ nickname, has been her only certified hit. Her other films, in lead roles, may have opened to packed houses but in sum, didn’t exactly ignite the cash counters:
The point is that the theme of sexuality today cannot be dependent on a sole star, derivative storylines, musical interludes at beachsides and amidst candle-lit boudoirs in the form of montages, not to forget gratuitous skin display. Cliches don’t wash any more.
Moreover with the policy of the Central Board of Film Certification being iffy to put it politely, no filmmaker cannot be certain about the definition of permissiveness, even within the prescribed limits.
Yet never say never. In recent years, Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D (2009), Ajay Bahl’s B.A. Pass (2013), Leena Yadav’s Parched (2015) and Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017), have dealt with sexuality with maturity and forthrightness.
Not suprisingly, then, sex for instant gratification at the movies, has been crashing like a house of discards.
(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter.)
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