Suresh Triveni, who last scored a run with the Anil Kapoor-helmed curry western Subedar, is back with a bang… well, at least the ladies on screen seem to have a whale of a time. One isn’t sure if our level of participation in the feminine raillery is just as much.
High on octane and not so high on logic, Maa Behen gallops to its finishing line on the strength of its wickedly wacky women. Madhuri Dixit has never been seen having so much fun with a part that requires her to be more Slutty than Sati Savitri. She sinks her fang into her character Rekha’s subconscious, exteriorizing the woman’s need to not conform. We get that. But what else?
Non-conformism is the essence of this wobbly, frisky take on feminism. Let Rekha and her two daughters, Jaya and Sushma (I am ignoring the Nirma buzz in my head), do what they want. They have the right to live the way they want to….
We get that. Lamentably, the parodic mood of storytelling seems attentively over-baked. The chaos in the ladies’ picture (these are the Laparwah Ladies whom Kiran Rao won’t really acknowledge unless forced to) starts—and never ends—when Rekha ends up with a dead body in her home. She shrieks into the phone (why use the phone when you can shout so loud?) to her two daughters for help.
Sounds familiar? In the recent J K Chandu directed Tamil film Revolver Rita, Radhika Sarathkumar and Keerthy Suresh played mother and daughter trying to hide a corpse in their home. In Revolver Rita, the corpse confusion happens during a birthday party, here it is a wedding.
The difference is: the ‘corpse’ in Maa Behen is not really dead. It takes all of Ravi Kishan’s willpower to look lifeless in a film where everyone is so animated that the film and the performances feel like a Disney cartoon.
Kishan is up and about in time for the concluding tirade on what women want and why they must be allowed to have it.
It all seems a bit tedious and manufactured. Suresh Triveni had earlier made that delightful little film Tumhari Sallu about a woman discovering her identity through a singing contest. In Maa Behen, we don’t even know what the women want. Is it sleeveless blouses? Is it a diction coach (their ‘Bihari’—and I presume it is that—keeps dropping and drooping with woozy urgency)? Is it money? Or is it just attention?
I am still trying to figure out the fulcrum of the dishevelled, scattered storyline — like a mop of curly uncontrollable hair — with three interesting but under developed woman who make a lot of noise about being judged by the men in the colony. But who is really being judged here? The audience which must take in the female fireworks in whichever shape it is projected? Or the characters who feel like they are in it for the fun rather than the feminism?
Most exasperating is Paresh Rawal as the man of the house, making a comeback with a woefully written character. He has his say. He leaves. We wait. The ladies do well: Madhuri, of course. She seems to have fun. Triptii Dimri and Dharna Durga, as her two daughters, seem to be contesting the feisty festival. They are scream stealers.
Gosh, so much shrieking. Ladies, what exactly are you looking for?
