Analysing films

Before I begin, I have to confess that I am not a big fan of Alankrita Shrivastav's work. I have had a chance to see her previous two outing, Lipstick under my Burqa and Dolly Kitty Ke Chamakte Sitare. And both of them failed to impress me. The message of femininity and trying to literally push it down viewers throat, gets a little too much and in Bombay Begum it is an encore too. There is a certain formulaic approach to how she looks at woman and that is weird. One understands for a society like India, we go with certain clichés and given norms. But...  I for one, growing up in the heartland of Eastern UP have seen the status of Woman, Girls and infant girls at home and outside. I remember someone (unfortunately cannot disclose the identity or the relation) who actually fathered a child from his daughter because some holy saint had instructed him to get into a "sambhog" with his daughter for the greater good of the family. We were kids growing up and understood little of...

Alankrita Shrivastava takes off from the Lipstick under the burqa tale and continues it with Chamkte Sitare... The film opens to two sisters enjoying at the local fair and seem to be content in what looks like a happy family with Dolly (Konkona) with husband and two kids. Alongside we have Kaajal (Bhumi) staying with the family who is running away from being married off in her hometown (we have heard so much about that). In the next two hour or so we are witness to an unhappy marriage that Konkona has to wade through in between her brief fling with the food delivery boy Osmaan Ansari (Amol Parashar) and battling with her son's sexual orientation. And Kaajal's ups and downs in the relationships that she goes through, and a failed one at that. What could have built up as a plot and a interesting take on the classic middle class of where small town girls get mixed up in the brouhaha of the urban metropolis and a working woman trying to find her foothold gets all horribly mixed up....