By Pranav Joshi

Watching Ram Gopal Varma’s films is like sitting on a see-saw of perverse delights which almost always goes out of control. He can lift you in diabolic elation as you test your own limits of disbelief and also bring you crashing down when he ventures into uncharted territory, catching you completely off guard. Yet one cannot help but feel a nasty cocktail of terror and forbidden intrigue by the luridly ribald and surreal vision of a man who dedicates his autobiography to Ayn Rand and Tori Black in the same cocky breath. Yet this time, the multiple-quote spewing, audio-visually terrorizing man has managed to outdo even his most nightmarish self — that too without the customary bombardment of jarring background music.

The title of RGV’s new short film itself makes words like “indulgent” and “unsavoury” respectful labels used to disparage filmmakers who have strayed – albeit temporarily – to unwanted realms. RGV’s unwavering conviction about his methods could possibly be interpreted in two disparate ways — a nihilist attempt to match life’s strangeness with equally insensible renderings or a practical joke which becomes less funny after every new “experiment”.

But what to make of the relentless and downright incomprehensible assault to the senses the director’s film boasts of? The plot is as incredulous as the dubbed dialogues, almost exposing the viewer to a new, undiscovered world of ignominious irrationality. RGV is the Creator Supreme of this self-absorbed landscape — a utopia which exists only for him, a place where he is a crusader fighting against social conventions, tradition and hypocrisy. For him, reality is just a pathetic excuse for a lack of guts. A lame refusal to avoid tantalizing, lethal “nashas” of sex, power, crime, drugs and alcohol.

In this film, if it can be called one, a girl belonging to a middle class household (probably a cursed, conservative mindset-festering disease according to RGV) emphatically admits she wants to be a porn star on the lines of Sunny Leone. Played to almost pitiful desperation by Naina Ganguly, her character routinely shoots down allegedly banal exclamations of preserving the family’s “izzat” and claims to realise the “aurat’s sexuality”. Her parents, played by Makarand Deshpande and Divya Jagdale, are aghast and almost in tears. At first glance, someone would mistake the nature of the conversation to be a revolutionary attempt at self-parody. But the 11-minute short takes it upon itself to let its  allegedly earnest, subversive message be heard loud and clear. Deshpande even contorts his face in expressions meant to seem flustered and troubled at his on-screen daughter’s claims. But they surprisingly betray a kind of abashed realization of the inane premise and its treatment. One assumes the stage actor is merely honing his meta-performance skills but even he gives in to the inexplicable, almost laughable commitment of the director in inspiring some sort of twisted debate on women’s rights.

Many more absurd, hyperbolic counter-claims follow, the least of which are – porn being a heavenly, noble fantasy making people happy and God promising mankind “sexy girls” in exchange of good deeds. The daughter finally decries her parents’ jobs, lives and mindset to leave and “embrace” a destiny of her own making. Divya Jagdale’s character resigns silently to a portentous fate on being a witness to her daughter’s rants and she evokes genuine emotion in an atrociously orchestrated drama which deserves almost none. Just when the viewer struggles to placate himself after bearing a near-irreversible descent into creative depravity, another one of RGV’s quotes features on the screen. This time, it is the self-styled auteur’s own pronouncement — a protestation to allegedly discount all accusations and misunderstandings on part of mortal, narrow-minded viewers. He claims to fully support women’s liberation and mentions free will as being above prejudice. One can only help wonder if this will find further expression in another delirious alternate reality: Guns and Thighs.

[The reviewer is a film aficionado studying to be a Computer Engineer]

Watch film here: