Art & Entertainment

Girlfriend

Sometimes even the job of a film critic requires spunk and spirit. How else can you watch Girlfriend but with patience, fortitude and a sense of humour?

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Girlfriend
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Sometimes even a film critic's job requires spunk and spirit. How else can you watch Girlfriend but with patience, fortitude and a sense of humour? In the beginning, the film's suitably asinine for some unintentional laughs. At a time when Bollywood is trying hard not to believe in "suspension of disbelief", the film tries to pass off Mauritius for Bombay/Goa. Its characters do little more than drinking, dancing and screaming. There are some bona fide gems pretending to be dialogues: "Main ek mard ke jism mein kaid aurat hoon....", "Ek ladka ladkon se pyaar nahin karta, ladki se karta hai...." The protracted lesson on alphabets and numerals is absolutely priceless—our grievously affected, "normal" heroine Sapna (Amrita) and her irredeemably nitwit boyfriend (Ashish) keep saying 1-2-3-4 for l-o-v-e. How you wish they could grow up, learn mathematics and count ahead!

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No wonder even laughing at the film becomes a bore chore. Sapna is dumb enough not to realise that her touchy-feely housemate Tanya (Isha) wants more than friendship, her excuse for what the two do between the sheets in the night: "Raat mein main behosh ho jati hoon". And then things take an ominous turn when even something as heinous as child sexual abuse becomes a joke: the trauma of the victim trivialised by an inane reference to a chocolate. The film keeps peddling all the clichés possible about a lesbian—that she is manly, wears trousers and leather jackets, likes to keep her hair short, rides mobikes, is a kickboxing expert, bashes up guys in night-clubs. She is a DIY guy who knows how to fix leaking taps.

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Such is the attention to these details that the big-built, buxom Isha is made to look flat-chested even as the slight Amrita goes overly curvaceous. Having established the stereotypes, the film goes further. A lesbian has to be a man-hating psycho with a disturbed childhood behind her, the prototype of a Zakhmi Aurat seeking revenge. Since she is a deviant she can't belong to the society and so will have to die. Wonder why Shiv Sena is carping so much about it when the film actually upholds their own opinion about homosexuality? In fact, the lesbian isn't even a Hindu here but a Christian. So are the protests a ploy to get more heads into the halls and manage a mention in The Guardian? It's the film buffs who should be protesting.

US Top 5
1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
2. The Chronicles of Riddick
3. Shrek 2
4. Garfield: The Movie
5. The Stepford Wives

INDIAN Top 5
1. Hum Tum
2. Dev
3. Aan—Men at Work
4. Girlfriend
5. Yuva

Courtesy: Film Information

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