Tribhanga movie review: Watching these flawed women bond is a moving, sometimes amusing, thought-provoking experience – Entertainment News , Firstpost

Yaari, dosti, yaarana — there was a time when Bollywood routinely churned out films on this theme, and a foreigner studying India through Hindi cinema might have been misled into believing that only men form friendships here. By the turn of the century, the preferred label became “male bonding flicks”, which was a more honest way of describing this almost-exclusively-male genre.

The likes of Dil Chahta Hai and Rock On have finally begun making way for women, the most high-profile example of this evolution being Shashanka Ghosh’s Veere Di Wedding (2018). I remember having conversations with women friends about how amusing it was that Veere caused discomfort among so many gentlemen we know. Believe it or not, yaaron and doston, women bond too; contrary to what the public discourse tells you, women can be allies of women; and — this might come as shock — women are not every man’s devi, (virtuous) maata, behen or desh ki beti; women are flawed and fabulous in ways that do not conform to patriarchal stereotypes.

That Renuka Shahane is conscious of all the above is evident throughout her directorial venture, Tribhanga – Tedhi Medhi Crazy, a welcome addition to the so-far-scanty female bonding genre in Bollywood.

The actor best known for her endearingly toothy smile as a co-anchor of the 1990s Doordarshan cultural programme Surabhi, has written and directed this film starring Tanvi Azmi, Kajol, and Mithila Palkar as three generations of a family who clash, crash, burn, love, and laugh together.

Kajol in Tribhanga plays Anuradha Apte, a controversial Bollywood star and Odissi dancer who is often the subject of gossip in the media. She has had a difficult relationship with her famous mother, the multiple-award-winning writer Nayantara Apte (Azmi). These two feisty, non-conformist women are more alike than Anuradha realises, and completely unlike her daughter Masha (Mithila Palkar).

The narrative kicks off with Nayantara – she is trying to write a letter to Anuradha and her son Robindra (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi), watched by Milan Upadhyay (Kunaal Roy Kapur), a writer who is helping her with her autobiography. When she collapses from a stroke in the middle of an interview to Milan, the family gathers at the hospital where the elderly lady lies in a coma.

Through Milan’s recordings of interviews with Nayantara, his interviews in the present day with Anuradha and Masha, the mother-daughter pairs conversations with each other, and flashbacks to the trio’s earlier years, Shahane unfolds a story of women making their own road against humongous odds in a world that expects them to kill their dreams for their spouses, offspring and social acceptance.

For decades, Bollywood assumed that cinema centred around women protagonists must perforce be teary-eyed, if not entirely tragic. It has taken too long for them to realise that women-centric films can and should cover the entire gamut of cinema from frivolous, frothy, and fun to grave and grim, just as men-centric films do. Tribhanga is at the mid-point of these extremes: a moving, sometimes amusing, thought-provoking experience.

The conformism and rebellion in Tribhanga come in layers, placing a spotlight on a point we rarely discuss: when a woman refuses to be straitjacketed, social opprobrium is directed not at her alone, but at her loved ones too – is it inconsiderate on her part to rebel nonetheless? (Minor spoiler alert in this paragraph) One female character in Tribhanga does apologise to another, though she does so – and this is crucial – not for the choices she made, but for being unaware of how society consequently treated that other person. (Spoiler alert ends)

That moment in the film, when Anuradha sees her mother’s life reflected in her own, arrives without fanfare and lingers without the point being spelt out. It is the lynchpin of this enterprise and a moment for which Shahane truly deserves applause.

Unlike the recent Shakuntala Devi, which was driven by a dislike and judgement of the iconic real-life woman whose story it told, Tribhanga is non-judgemental even as it shines a light on Nayantara, Anuradha, and Masha’s failings and strengths, foolishness and wisdom.

That said, I am still waiting for a day when Bollywood consistently makes films in which alcohol, cigarettes or a foul mouth are not underlined as a marker of a strong woman character or an emblem of her strength and freedom. I am not passing moral strictures here, but pointing out gently that there exist in this world many tough-as-nails women who have none of these habits, but even some lovely filmmakers have treated these as symbols of feminism, thus giving fuel to anti-feminists who would like to define feminism in such superficial terms rather than by the massive battles women worldwide are fighting – against female foeticide, sexual violence,  discriminatory employment practices, conservative families and worse. For the most part, Tribhanga gets it right, but it does very consciously use the glass of whiskey in Nayantara’s hand as representative of her liberation.

This is a necessary debate, but what is beyond debate is that Tribhanga is an entertaining, thoughtful, well-acted female bonding flick, as unconventional as the three women whose stories it tells. I would pay Netflix’s entire annual subscription fee just for the joy of watching an Indian film gutsy enough to have a female character describe marriage as “societal terrorism”, or for the manner in which Shahane presents that final, poignant shot of the three women with a sublime score playing in the background. Lovely.

Tribhanga streams on Netflix. 

(A longer version of this review will be up shortly)