I watched Queen over the weekend.
Once upon a time I’d blogged/whined about the dearth of coming-of-age-films with female protagonists in the bromance genre.
From my blogpost circa 2012-
“What gives Bollywood?
How long do I have to wait for THIS movie to be made- the *definitive* female-protagonist driven movie about friendship and coming of age?
You know, where you take three young girls and document their stories- the class bunking,the road-trips, the philosophic conversations in scenic settings , the drunken declarations, the ‘finding’ of themselves (or whatever self-actualisation stunt you want to pull). May be you will have to include the bits about their paths to love, but hopefully you can do that without making them ditch their friends enroute to the altar.”
Queen (Kangna Ranaut, Lisa Haydon) is probably the closest thing to what I’d asked for. Reaffirms my belief that the Secret (aka Central Philosophy of Om Shaanti Om) kinda sorta does work 🙂
I loved it for the most part . It’s always nice to watch a film and find a character who sometimes thinks and reacts as you would do.*
What REALLY got my attention, though, was Rani’s fiance- Vijay, because once upon a time , I too dated a Vijay.
My Vijay was a real piece of work, who’d joined college after a lifetime of fancy boarding-schooling in the hills. Now I was a bindi wearing, salwar donning lass circa 2005. The bindi was by choice, an experiment of sorts; the salwar, the campus norm. I gave up the bindi after he made a huge fuss one day about how I looked ‘like a villager’. Also, he once tried to ‘forbid’ me from attending a party that he wasn’t invited to. (He succeeded.) He wasn’t all uniformly villain-ish levels of bad, though I wish i could say I’d dumped him first.
As it so happens, he broke up with me. I was terribly heartbroken, for about five minutes.
(Okay, five days, mummyji-daddyji ki kasam.)
And then he returned, wanting to make amends.
That last scene in the movie is a gem. It’s possible to feel sadness happiness affection pity indifference for one single person, in one single minute. And to hug them. Then walk away. Which is naturally what I did, without the kick-ass soundtrack in the background and the slo-mo effect. But still.
*I am totally the kind of girl who would make sure my cardigan was stowed away safely in my bag before getting smashed.
Desi Daaru 