A Conservative Rebel

FILMS The Better and The Worse SEX FIRE and SADMA What these films have in common is that in both the performing stars are from the south, that Silk Smitha is introduced, used and abused solely as a sex object, and that the male hero plays the role of a saviour of women. But there the likeness ends. Sex Fire is one of the series of Malayalam films screened in the capital in the original language but with new titles like Sexy Nights, Sex Aur Katil, Sexy Dreams, Her Nights. These films, advertised with pictures of semi nude women and captions like “Sex needs no language” or “Bold”, “Daring”, “Reveals All”, are running to packed houses. The audience is nearly all male, so much so that reviewing the film Acrobats And Saviours in such an environment proved quite a task for the two of us. The Malayalam title of this film is Avataram, which means Silk Smitha, is seen reciprocating advance of the lecherous an incarnation of god. This incarnation is the hero, Ravi. One night she goes to his house to meet him but finds appropriately named Shiva, whose role is that of a saviour of his father waiting her instead. She tries to flee but is women, comprising his mother, sister, beloved and others. overpowered and raped. Though his viciousness does come The hero’s native village is provided with a large factory. through there is also an indication that she is being punished He works as foreman in this factory. The factory owner lives in for her seductiveness. a palatial bungalow. This rural and urban mix is completely Within minutes another violent scene ensues Smitha’s incongruous. The depiction of the rural poor women of the so father is murdered and Smitha poisoned the factory owner. called low castes is even more distorted. They are shown in However, he fails in his atte to annihilate the hero, his mother tight, revealing clothing, and their body movements resemble and his sister. those of the typical filmi vamp. This depiction has the effect of The film concludes with a gruesome vengeance scene making them seem guilty for all the sexual violence against where the violence is justified because it is supposed to be them that ensues. good triumphing over evil. This is followed by the happy Shiva spends his time successfully demolishing the evil couples united at last. designs of the factory owner, on occasion after occasion. On This pornographic film left one feeling numb its perverted the one hand he knocks out whole gangs of hired hoodlums messages.While women are shown mere objects to be while on the other he woos and wins the factory owner’s controlled, abused and discarded by men, the only possible daughter. We are deluded into believing that his sexual access salvation is shown to come through a benevolently violent to this girl is not social climbing or male vengeance but the man. This role of saviour rules out the possibility of any noble art of true love. social change by the oppressed themselves. Meanwhile the sexual prowess of the factory owner’s son Sadma, whicji is a remake of the Tamil Moondram Pirai Ravi is displayed in his simultaneous affairs with two poor and Telugu Vasanta Kokila was a different experi ence. The women. One is Shiva’s sister Nandini, with whom a song dance heroine Snehlata suffers total amnesia as the result of a car sequence “Mohum, mohum” (desire, desire) is enacted. Her accident. She then begins to act like a six -year old — crying, disrobing and the subsequent coitus is depicted as hungry giggling, romping, and sucking her thumb at bedtime. and violent consumption by the man of a passive, whimpering She is captured and imprisoned in a brothel where Somu, a female doll. This male consumption of a female object is shy young school teacher, meets her and touched by her fundamental to all pornography. The other young woman, childlike pleas for mercy. He promptly rescues her and takes 46 MANUSHI her to the hill station where teaches in a posh school. man and the hollowness of any security marriage to him might The major portion of the film is enacted in this idyllic offer, turns him out of her house. He then drives straight to his setting. Somu looks after the child woman with a lot of care ex wife’s house and tells her that he has come back to her, and and tenderness, indulging in plenty of horseplay and goofing. will never betray her again. She asks him : “If I had done what This male female relationship takes on an important new you have done and had then come back to you, would you dimension, hitherto unknown on the screen. There is a poetic have accepted me ?” He admits that he would not have restraint about it. Though sensual, it remains non sexual. accepted her, whereupon she says “Goodbye” and walks into Kamala hasan’s enacting of the role of Somu is brilliant by any the house, leaving him to drive away, alone. standard, but Sridevi’s role as well as the portrayal by her is The film does not end on this note as if the union or naive and overdone to the point where one begins to wonder separation between husband and wife is all there is to life. It is whether six year olds are really so unbearable. Yet the two do made clear that the woman has not, as in Nikah or Ek Bar manage to project a childlike world without mushiness. Phir, exchanged dependence on one man for dependence on However the Sippy producers did not sink 70 lakhs into another. Thus the issue does not get diluted into that of finding the portrayal of a child’s world. So the sexy masala had to be a good man instead of a bad one. While maintaining a mutually added. There is a preparatory dose in the attempted rape of supportive friendship with another man, she refuses to again Sridevi. The rapist is apprehended and duly thrashed by Somu. slide into the role of wife. Instead, she builds an independent Silk Smitha is then introduced solely for this purpose. As the life and also adopts a little girl. The story of the girl’s mother young wife of the school principal, she is throughout shown adds an important dimension to the film’s consideration of with her mouth half open, eyes half closed, and panting with women’s situation. This woman works as a domestic servant lust. This insatiable vamp is out to seduce our innocent hero. and supports the family yet has no social option but to submit While waiting for him to show up at her place, she fantasizes to her husband’s beatings and abuses. When he steals the about him. This is the famous dance number put out in the money she has painfully saved for her daughter’s education, publicity stills. After being spurned by Somu, Smitha she can bear it no longer, and kills him. disappears from the screen, since there is now no need for her. It is the storyline which makes the film a refreshing change Towards the end, the heroine miraculously recovers and but some of the portrayals and motifs seem to be hangovers of promptly forgets all about the post accident period. The police prevalent stereotypes, for instance, the portrayal of the other and her parents whisk her away to the city, while Somu woman. Her neuroticism and hysteria are unnecessarily undergoes complete disintegration. Despite its obvious overdone, Marilyn Monroe’s picture appearing as backdrop shortcomings, Sadma makes as impact mainly through Somu. to emphasize the point. She is throughout dressed in flashy His role as a small time good guy, shy and gawky, is designed westernized clothing designed to reveal as much of her body to win audience sympathies. The two women exist only to as possible while the wife is clad in sari or salwar kamiz. The highlight his goodness. Alas, the saviour is done in by the wife’s weeping too seems somewhat overdone. Is it really dramatic ending—by a woman at that! necessary for her to be in tears or on the verge of tears in —Nina Kapoor every alternate scene ? Somewhere the film seems still caught (On the spot translation from Malayalam was done in the pure woman and impure woman syndrome. There are by Lily P.L.) two scenes modelled on the pattern common in commercial ARTH—In Search Of Meaning films—where two women confront each other, and the “other One must congratulate the maker of this bold and woman” is berated as a whore and a husband stealer. meaningful film. It was indeed a pleasure to come out of a Nevertheless, on the whole an effort was made to show her as cinema, not feeling degraded and humiliated by the portrayal sensitive, and to bring about a minimal understanding between of women. The film takes up a situation that has recurred in the two women. many films over the last few years-—that of the unfaithful One found the portrayal of the husband a step forward in husband who returns at last to his wife. In Silsila, Pati Patni realism as compared to the portrayal of such men in most films. Aur Woh, Masoom, Ek Hi Bhool and dozens of others, the There is no attempt to romanticize his predicament, to make it man picks up and then discards another woman where upon seem humorous, or to mask his duplicity and egotism.

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