Filmi Geek

Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015)

Dir. Anand L. Rai

 

Let me start with what's great about Tanu Weds Manu Returns:  The comedy, the dialogues, Kangana Ranaut - and Kangana Ranaut.

Lesbian horn-dog Carla: So, butch Kangana is cute and all, but femme Kangana really turns my crank.  There were times I actually caught my breath when she appeared on screen.

Feminist, analytical, serious Carla: Oh, for heaven's -- you again? I'm trying to write a review here. Go home and watch Revolver Rani. Again.

LHDC: Great idea! You stay here and do ... whatever it is you do.

This second installment of the story of Tanu and Manu (Kangana Ranaut and Madhavan) is very, very funny, playing with broadly painted characters and lots of regional humor.  Some is quite broad indeed, like a bunch of Sardars dressed in florid Gujurati costume, dancing dandiya to Bhangra music to celebrate the marriage of a Punjabi woman to a Gujurati man.  Others are harder for a foreigner like me to get; there are times when the audience in the cinema hall roars, yet the joke I see in the subtitles doesn't justify that reaction.  Still, I have learned enough over the years to appreciate the craft that goes into this kind of rapid-fire, clever bantering.  

As the film opens, Tanu and Manu have lived four years in England. Tanu's English has improved quite a bit since she sneered "London returned!" at Manu in the first installment.   But when Tanu loses her cool - she's detailing the failures in their marriage to a panel of psychiatrists - her homegrown Kanpuri dialect finds its way out, and she has to translate her own exclamations for the doctors.  Later, other characters again have trouble understanding each other - as when Manu's still-hilarious buddy Pappi (Deepak Dobriyal, as much a scene-stealer as he was in part one) has to explain a colorful metaphor about getting squashed like a squeak-toy - and the cross-dialect jokes fly fast and freely.

And then there is Kangana, who inhabits Tanu with absolutely riveting intensity. Her eyes almost glow when she's angry, shine when she peals out laughter, sparkle with mischief in one of her whirlwinds of impulse.  And when Tanu cracks with vulnerability toward the end of the film, her entire body language changes, the crackling energy drained. It's a thrilling performance, an actor masterfully embodying a fully realized theory of her character. (These swings from fire to vulnerability are becoming a calling-card of Kangana's talent; I have more to say about this in my written-but-not-yet-posted comments on Revolver Rani, another explosively engaging performance and a terribly underappreciated film.)

And it's only half of what Kangana does in this film, because she also offers up Kusum, a young student on athletic scholarship in Delhi.  But it's not just the thick Haryanvi accent or the short hairstyle that distinguishes the two women. Kusum is every bit as confident as Tanu, but she is considerably more measured, less impulsive.  Her confidence is chin-forward, more about forging her own path through the world than about the rebellion-for-rebellion's-sake that sometimes seems to motivate Tanu.  Kusum's body language is completely different, too; square and confrontational in contrast to Tanu's flirtatious and playful demeanor.  Kangana's finest execution in the film comes in the Kusum avatar, in the climax. It is a deeply vulnerable moment, but Kusum strides past a crowd of onlookers, radiating dignity.  And the instant she is out of sight, she pulls a door shut behind her with shaking fingers, and crumples. It is a wrenching and perfectly-delivered dose of self-possession in anguish.

Still, this second chapter harder to swallow than the original, because Manu is even less appealing as a lover and hero than he was in the first.  When Manu courted Tanu, there was enough substance to make up for his wet-noodle personality, enough sweetness to overcome the initial creepiness of how he fell for her as a lifeless doll, not as the spitfire she actually is. Here, though, Manu's pursuit of Kusum is twisted from the beginning, and doesn't get better. Manu, with his paunch and his moobs and the dusting of grey at his temples, is the picture of middle age in crisis, and Kusum has the right initial reaction to his stalking and ogling: revulsion and anger.  Manu is fascinated with Kusum because she looks just like Tanu.  And perhaps out of naïveté, Kusum softens to Manu when she learns this, rather than finding him all the more creepy for it.  But it is clear to the audience, and to other characters in the film - if not right away to Kusum - that Manu's attraction to her is pathological. Manu thinks he loves her for who she is, but he is deluding himself; while proposing to her, he calls her Tanu.  

Manu starts off sympathetic during the film's oddly-crafted opening sequence, in which he is committed to a psychiatric treatment center for basically no reason at all (this sequence, while funny, is so nonsensical that as it reached its peak I expected it to turn out a dream).  But he burns that capital pretty thoroughly with his sicko seduction of Kusum.  The stakes are high, because there's no way that this inappropriate relationship should succeed.  At the same time, though, there is almost no actual interaction between Tanu and Manu during the film, and so not a lot of reason to root for their reconciliation, either.  And this is perhaps the movie's most serious misstep, neglecting to provide much reason to think that reunion is the right result for Tanu and Manu.  The movie puts a lot of effort into its comedy, clever rapid-fire dialog and absurd situations, but very little into the actual relationships that should drive the story.  It's fun, but ultimately not very satisfying.

A few folks have read this film as regressive. I don't see it that way.  Tanu, after a vacation-like stretch of the sort of flirty, impulsive freedom she enjoyed before meeting Manu, comes to mourn the apparent failure of her marriage, and shows some depression and regret over it. This is not regressive; it is not a spirited, modern woman broken by or succumbing to the weight of tradition. Rather, it is a human being coming to see the value in a relationship that she had previously taken for granted.  Likewise, there is nothing regressive in Kusum's cautious sacrifice. Her actions are a matter of self-preservation, and demonstrate the measured insight, the hint of maturity, that separates her from Tanu.  If Kusum had not questioned the idea of marriage to a man twice her age who clearly wants her only for psychologically messed-up reasons, that would be a less agentive and considerably more problematic portrayal of a young woman.

Tanu Weds Manu (2011)

Dir. Anand L. Rai

In one of my favorite scenes in Tanu Weds Manu, Tanu (Kangana Ranaut) and her best friend Payal (Swara Bhaskar) collapse on a bed in squealing laughter.  This comes after the two young women have been out for a late-night campfire with Manu (Madhavan) and Payal's fiance Jassi (Eijaz Khan).  Jassi coaxes Payal away from the other pair, into the dark, hoping for sex, but Payal storms back, fiery and hollering with indignation. Even though it's just days before their wedding, the scene seems to say, Payal is a seedhi-saadhi ladki, not that kind of girl. 

But then cut to Payal and Tanu yukking it up, and you realize they've had one over on Jassi - and you realize you have no idea whether Payal is that kind of girl or not.  And that is what I like best about Tanu Weds Manu:  It lets its young women be as they are, without making too much of its own progressiveness.  Tanu and Payal are not overtly chaste filmi types, but they aren't threatening or caricatured vamps either. They smoke, but it doesn't signify anything; rather, it just reflects that some young women smoke.  And they aren't punished or humiliated for any of it either. In one scene, Tanu skulks around during Payal's pre-wedding festivities hoping to score some liquor; she succeeds, and takes a few generous plugs, but she doesn't go on to make a fool of herself or say things she'll regret, as heroines under the influence so often do.  Instead, the booze loosens her up just enough to sing a charming, jaunty, folksy song(*) for the guests.  

Tanu Weds Manu is what would happen if you made a movie about one of the heroine's-sassy-saheli characters who sometimes popped up in movies of the 60s, played by actors like Laxmi Chhaya and Shashikala.  Indeeed, in this movie the sidekick, Payal, shows a good deal more class and level-headed sense than the heroine.  Tanu is all sass; she ribs Payal on the eve of her wedding, comparing men to horses, and rolling her eyes at Payal's readiness for adulthood.  Tanu (beyond the smoking and drinking) is impulsive enough to get a guy's name tattooed on her breast the day after she meets him. Later, though, she tells Manu that guys come and go, and she's not particularly attached to any one of them.  (She's hedged her bets with the tattoo by using the guy's surname.)  Tanu even owns that she likes girls, too - this bold admission passes unremarked, another way that the movie presents young women living adventurously without either judging them for it or smugly congratulating itself for not doing so. 

As with any pure romance, the conclusion of Tanu Weds Manu is foregone; the film acknowledges as much with its very title. The romance begins as the principals' parents attempt to arrange a marriage between them. Tanu, looking to sabotage the match, swallows a handful of downers; she is nearly comatose when her mother dresses her in a heavily embroidered saree and presents her to Manu. But her nonresponsiveness is no deterrent to Manu, an NRI medical engineer, and he somehow falls in love with Tanu on the spot.  This is a weak serve; love by scripted fiat is never especially satisfying, and it's not clear why, if Manu loves Tanu as a catatonic china doll, he loves her all the more after their first conversation, in which she is a cigarette-smoking spitfire who scowls at him with contempt.

But the movie makes up the lost ground by giving the two several fair chances to get to know each other, and by the time Tanu does wed Manu, the pairing actually seems to make sense.  And even though Manu is a measured and reserved fellow and Tanu a wild child, the story doesn't so much hew to the typical manic-pixie-dream-girl arc; Manu enjoys and even admires Tanu's vivacity, but there's no sign she has fundamentally changed his worldview or personality.  Rather, Manu's steadiness brings Tanu round to a more grounded, Payal-like way of interacting with the world. Tanu's missteps are driven by an overdeveloped taste for drama and rebellion for rebellion's sake; a round scolding from Payal helps put her priorities in order.   Manu is rather spineless and overweeningly self-sacrificing for much of his arc; until the very end, his boldest action is a weaksauce attempt to sabotage Tanu's elopement with the guy in the tattoo - an attempt so half-assed that even Manu seems ashamed of it.  And so it is sweet that what finally kicks Manu into action are some encouraging words from his father, to the effect that it's worth doing something once in your life that you can look back on with pride.   

Payal, Manu's father, Tanu's patient yet vexed father (Rajendra Gupta), a goonda with a romantic soul (Jimmy Shergill), Jassi, and especially Manu's loyal and passionate sidekick Pappi (Deepak Dobriyal) make up a large and colorful cast of supporting characters that help Tanu Weds Manu stand out in its genre. Unlike, say, Shuddh Desi Romance, with its weirdly isolated leads, Tanu Weds Manu situates its principals in a more traditionally Indian context of family and community.  Tanu and Manu are orbited by many opinionated satellites who exert powerful and competing tidal pulls on their relationship  as it develops.  The film is Tanu Weds Manu, as opposed to just Tanu and Manu, because just as a wedding involves and affects a whole set of extended families beyond the betrothed couple themselves, so does the movie involve this broad range of people.  And they add a great deal of dimension to the film, lending a grounded sense of community to the central pairing, and making the ride toward the titular and preordained conclusion that much more delightful.  

(*) "Kajra mohabbat wala," from the Biswajeet and Babita flick Kismet - thanks to Anindita for reminding me.

 

Piku (2015)

Dir. Shoojit Sircar

Even when embedded in smart banter and delivered flawlessly by Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika Padukone, a poop joke is still a poop joke.  I feel guilty for leading with this thought, because there is so much to delight in about Piku, with its gentle and loving presentation of a relationship between a difficult man and his prickly daughter, and for me the toilet humor doesn't spoil the delight.  But Piku is, um, flush with lines and situations that revolve around the bowl.  Bhaskor Bannerji's (Amitabh) thoughts pertain excessively to the function and dysfunction of his bowels, and so do his conversations with his daughter Piku (Deepika).  They snipe and bark and snap at each other, and it's almost always something about poo. That's a whole lot of poop-talk to cram into one movie, and it is is only funny to the extent that you find poop funny, something upon which reasonable minds may differ.  

But the framing of these conversations is just terrific.  The dialogues are quick-paced and witty, staged in the rapid cross-talk style that one associates with quirky Western films about family dysfunction.  Bhaskor and Piku live in a constant swirl of griping, poking, insulting banter with the other people who move in and out of their home - such as Bhaskor's dead wife's sister (Moushumi Chatterjee), his indulgent physician (Raghuvir Yadav), the beleaguered owner of a taxi company, Rana Chaudhary (Irrfan Khan), who gets stuck driving the pair all the way from Delhi to Calcutta, and even various servants.  The repartee is fun to watch and almost dizzying at times in its acerbic swiftness.   

Piku and Bhaskor, and to a degree Rana, aren't exactly nice people.  Bhaskor is the sort of man who says outrageous and even offensive things, only to put on a "What, what did I say?" act when the people around him bristle in response.  He's the sort of man who blurts Piku's sexual status (viz.: not a virgin) to any young man she introduces him to.   And Piku is even more abrasive; there are running jokes in the first half of the film about how awful she is, as Rana's drivers hide when she calls for a cab, and her business partner (and sometime lover) Syed (Jishu Sengupta) begs her to be a shred more diplomatic with clients.  A series of household servants have quit rather than stay caught in the middle of Piku and Bhaskor's squabbles.   (The film's few unwaveringly nice people, like Syed, are steamrolled by the kinetic force of their bickering.)  

But in the light of her dynamic with Bhaskor, Piku's acidity is understandable; they are metaphysically connected, so that his intestinal discomfort manifests in her sourness.  One has the sense that the film joins Piku long after she has reached a breaking point; mean and impatient comments fly out of her mouth in all directions not because she is a horrible person, but because she has long since exhausted the energy it takes to contain them.  And so there is a general feeling of goodness around Piku despite all her cranky rudeness, a sense of the love she has for her difficult, aging father, though it takes about a third of the film before she even shows a flicker of a smile in his direction, while watching him dance around his room to "Jibone ki pabona."  Bhaskor's love for Piku is no less, and it is both liberating and possessive; he doesn't want her to marry partly because he needs her full attention, but also because he believes that marriage, the service of a husband and production of his children, is a waste of a woman's human potential.  And as this relationship takes shape under the push-me-pull-you of Piku's need for independence and Bhaskor's need for Piku, it becomes the heart and soul of the film.  What makes all the poop jokes endurable is this universally relatable tension of caring for an aging parent, and of negotiating the parent-child relationship when the child is an adult and the parent begins to have child-like needs.  

As is often the case, it takes an outsider to give this squabbling pair new perspective on their bond, and help them resolve their discordant themes.  The outsider is Rana, who has family strain of his own, a mother and a sister he seems to despise; indeed, escape from them is a strong motivation for him to drive Piku and Bhaskor to Calcutta when all his employees refuse the assignment.  Rana, too, is irritable and abrasive, but he quickly learns that humoring Bhaskor is the only way to survive sharing close quarters with the duo.  When, while doing so, he draws a diagram of the lower digestive tract complete with emergent oblong excretions, the toilet humor reaches apotheosis; but Rana is deliberately pushing the poop talk over the edge, teasing Bhaskor by goading him in his ridiculous obsession with excrement.  

Piku's long-suffering bitterness mixed with affection is rendered with charming precision by Deepika Padukone.  This film is a great and different use of Deepika's by now well-established talent; she is usually either perfectly glamorous or preternaturally sweet, as she was in another quirky-group-takes-a-road-trip movie, Finding Fanny.  Here, she is more natural than ever, with minimal makeup that even allows some slight unevenness in her usually flawless complexion to show.  It's humanizing and appealing, and allows her to be all the more lovely even while scowling.  For Irrfan Khan, naturalness is practically a signature; he complements it here with deadpan comic timing that bolsters some of the film's biggest laughs.  Amitabh's performance, while endearing, isn't exactly natural.  He manages to embody a frail and quirky character while still remaining Amitabh Bachchan the elder statesman of superstars; to the extent his performance is restrained, he nibbles on the scenery rather than broadly chewing it.  But it's all lovely, and makes for a charming and rewarding ride through one man's digestive tract and across northern India.