The Zendaya-starrer Challengers is in theatres now — a film about three tennis players who are romantically involved with each other over a period of 13 years. Every step of the way, one of them is looking to outdo the others on and off the court. And at the centre of it all is a magnetic woman who is unapologetic of the power she holds.
After years of unprovocative — almost prudish — big-studio superhero films, Italian director Luca Guadagnino, known for Call Me By Your Name (2017) and Bones and All (2022), brings back desire and passion to the mainstream American blockbuster landscape. He shoots bodies in a matter-of-fact yet sensuous manner that does not feel voyeuristic or awkward. Take for example, the shots of sweat dripping off a character’s face while playing a make-or-break game of tennis, or a close-up of an athlete’s limbs as she trains. The characters’ passion for each other and tennis feeds off one another until it gets difficult to separate the two. Since the movie’s release, the media has proclaimed that “sexy” movies are back in the theatres.
Contrast this to the average Indian blockbuster of the last couple of years. There are bodies, a lot of them. Mostly dead or attacked by a “hero” with a six-pack, seven-pack, probably even an eight-pack. It is clear that at the core of the films is a great deal of violence, vengeance and vendetta. These heroes are guided by sentiments of duty, family or nationalism. Desire is rarely the driving force of the protagonist or the story.
This could be attributed to the increasingly masculine nature of our discourse today from politics to families. We speak in terms of ownership, honour and religion. Our heroes now are brash, angry and patriotic. They are seldom vulnerable. Perhaps the showcasing of desire, longing and love would make them vulnerable — and that is a space very few filmmakers and actors want to venture into. Today, every film is judged for its “moral” value and informed by the politics of the day. (Remember the outrage over the saffron bikini in Pathaan?) In this landscape, art is rarely given space to transgress.
Among last year’s biggest Bollywood hits is Animal, estimated to have made over Rs 900 crores worldwide, which has a scene where the protagonist Ranvijay Singh, the son of a Delhi-based tycoon, wields a machine gun and then an axe to massacre those who attempt to kill his father. The action, however, feels rudderless. He has two relationships in the film and some sex, but the women are severely underwritten. His bonds with them have zero intimacy.
In Pathaan and Jawan, Shah Rukh Khan’s larger-than-life comeback knockouts, desire takes a backseat. There are glimpses of the old, romantic Shah Rukh in bits, but it is clear that he has had to refashion himself as a soldier in one and a righteous vigilante in another.
Prashant Neel’s Salaar: Part 1 — Ceasefire, starring Prabhas and Prithviraj, is one impressive action set-piece after another with deliberate frantic editing. The two male leads share a bromance, but that’s about it. The less said about the women in this film, the better.
S S Rajamouli’s RRR (2022) lent itself to a lot of queer reading of the two main characters: Ram and Bheem portrayed by Telugu superstars Ramcharan and Junior NTR. But there was relentless backlash by fans who underlined that their heroes could never pine for each other — that is beyond the realm of possibility of Indian mainstream cinema.
The action films aside, desire and sex seem to be entirely missing even in our more grounded and realistic films.
In 12th Fail, an earnest film with an excellent performance by Vikrant Massey, the language is primarily of struggle and hard work. The two breakout Malayalam films this year — Manjummel Boys and Aavesham — have found an all-India audience for their technical prowess and organic storytelling. They are both different — the former is a survival drama, the latter is a madcap gangster masala entertainer. But both have no women characters and very little space for any form of intimacy.
Pushing boundaries
Over the decades, most industries in the country have had their defining stories of desire. Guide (1965) and Kabhi Kabhie (1976) in Bollywood, considered way ahead of their time, were among the highest-grossing films of their years. Mani Ratnam’s Mouna Ragam (1986), a story of a girl pressured into an arranged marriage while mourning the death of a boyfriend from college, had a long run in the theatres. Ratnam’s Geethanjali (1989), his only Telugu-language film, has a lovely Ilaiyaraja melody that features Nagarjuna and Girija Shettar sharing a kiss through the entirety of the song as the camera swirls around them.
Desire was clearly central to our storytelling. Films deployed it to push the boundaries of our country’s tight-wound mentality. People also embraced it. Somewhere that changed. Now, it is almost like we have turned back in time in our worldview of desire and sex.
But the biggies in the film business should perhaps take a cue that the audience is starved of sensual and beautiful films on screen. The debacle of YRF’s studio’s Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, starring Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff, and Fighter starring Deepika Padukone and Hrithik Roshan, also shows that perhaps there is audience fatigue. Both these films were high-budget, sleek and had menacing villains. They both failed.
Maybe, all that the audience wants is to see our actors swooning and yearning on screen again.
vidhatri.rao@expressindia.com
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