Subhash K Jha revists Aparna Sen’s Sonata, which starred Shabana Azmi, Lillete Dubey, and Aparna Sen, that released in 2017. We also hear from the director and Shabana Azmi about the making of the film.
There is no sannata in Sonata. The three protagonists talk endlessly. This enchanting chamber piece is like a Beethoven symphony for the sexually impaired. Nothing really ‘happens’ in the 90-minute celluloid discourse on post-menopausal sexuality and other related topics on how to be a woman past her prime without guilt and the accompanying crimes.
Where are the Indian films that celebrate middle-aged women’s sexuality? Sonata is the psychological exploration of three unmarried women facing a mid-life crisis -Aruna Chaturvedi, Dolon Sen, and Subhadra Parekh, a professor, a banker, and a journalist. The 103-minute film revolves around the emotional ups and downs of these three friends, culminating in an event of global magnitude, confronted with which their everyday joys and sorrows pale into insignificance.
While Aparna Sen plays a woman who has turned her back on love, Lilette Dubey plays a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. Shabana Azmi has the most complex role as she unravels layers after layers of closeted yearnings through her character.
Shabana Azmi and Aparna Sen are self consciously stagey, like two people, two women, who have been so close to one another for such a long time that they can afford to ‘act’ in front of one another without the risk of being misconstrued or causing permanent damage to their mutual relationship. The fact that Shabana and Aparna have been friends in real life for as long as they are shown to be close in this film helps imbue their characters and their shared relationship with a warmth and whimsy that are the opposite of social etiquette and flimsy. These women can put their feet up on the table, belch and fart, and bitch their hearts out. Shabana has a ball playing the irrepressible, crazily self-serving, subtly slutty Dolon Sen. She is at once mercurial and feisty, deeply compassionate and unrelentingly obstinate. Generous and bitchy. The way she dances around in chirpy splendor, preening and posturing, sobbing and screeching in the perfectly appointed living room that she has shared with her prim friend for 20 years, is a sight to behold.
What a radiant beauty Aparna Sen continues to be. Oh yes, the camera loves her. And she loves it back.
Says Aparna Sen, “In this film, I attempted to explore various aspects of the feminine gaze. To make that exploration wider in its scope, I introduced two minor characters apart from the three single women who are the protagonists: a maid, thereby cutting across class borders– and a transgender woman. None of these characters were there in the original play by Mahesh Elkunchwar, from which the film is adapted. I also changed the ending by bringing into the lives of these women a tragedy of global magnitude, which not only places their personal anxieties in perspective but also strengthens the bond of friendship among them.”
Aparna Sen’s real-life husband, Kalyan Sen, was yanked out of his academic kingdom to play his wife’s long-standing love interest. This is not the first time Aparna has invited her husband to face the camera. In Paroma, Aparna’s then-husband Mukul Sharma played Raakhee Gulzar’s lover.
This is Shabana’s fourth film with Aparna Sen, and it is one that she’s proud of. “I enjoyed playing my character Dolon Sen. It’s a great part ….wilful and funny with quicksilver mood, and she’s uninhibited. I truly enjoyed the character’s abandon. Dolon is a lovely part and it was very generous of Rina(Aparna Sen) to give it to me rather than keep it for herself. Dolon is quicksilver in her changing moods, whimsical, childlike, demanding, and yet warm and loving. Hindi cinema mein kahaan milte hain aise shades?”
Lilette Dubey, playing a boisterous journalist with an abusive boyfriend, joins the two women midway. She is, as usual, a rabble-rousing life force, breaking into a jig to the sound of ‘Babu dheere chalna”… must every onscreen feisty woman dance only to that song?….in brief, a predictable misfit.
When together, the three women share an easy, fluent, robust camaraderie that indicates many years of unconditional compatibility. You come away from Sonata with impressions of femininity way removed from what cinema has taught us over the centuries.
From Devika Rani kissing her co-star Himanshu Roy in Karma to Shabana Azmi ogling and giggling at boys on TV in underwear….Lady, you sure have come a long way.
Though the exterior surface of the trailer gleams with giggles, there are undercurrents of tremendous frisson and anguish in Aparna Sen’s latest work Sonata.
Sonata works because the trio of actresses are as free-spirited in real life as they are on screen. The trio of women guffawing over the fact that they are not “even” feminists… But beneath that self-deprecatory laughter is the emptiness that this genre has faced in India.
Sonata seems to work because there are three beautiful actresses navigating Aparna Sen’s dream to fruition.
