To be honest, all we imagine as light shone brightly on the ladies this year. Sisterhood ruled in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light , Kiran Rao’s Laapata Ladies and at year-end in Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls.
In another part of the world, another brilliant female filmmaker Sandhya Suri made some constructive noise on female empowerment with Santosh, a hardhitting tense cops drama with Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar bonding in praise-Vardi Khakee.
These are post-feminist works of unfettered art transcending the limitations of the ‘chick-flick’ genre by focussing on empowered muliebrity far beyond the common feminist tropes : demonization of the male, sexual assault and discrimination and gender biases.
There is a refreshing candour to the language of womanhood shared by the above films.
A pity, only one of them Laapata Ladies got an audience in India. Together the women in front of and behind the camera in these films, have taken women in our cinema , kicking and dragging, to a new level.
Yes, women ruled in 2024, none more so than Samantha Ruth Prabhu whose stormy star turn in Amazon/ Raj-DK’s Citadel: Honey Bunny brought her the kind of global fame and fan following most Asian actors only dream of.
Clearly the deftly written plot put Samantha at the crest of the gender ladder. As a single woman going all-out to protect her daughter from grave danger Samantha delivers a strong argument for the shero without the crutches of the hero .Samantha in Honey Bunny is no frail fraulein who needs a man to feel empowered(ref: Vedaa) .
She kicks the baddies with an expertise that recalled Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. When faced with adversity she didn’t phone a (male) friend, or get brownie points for being a woman.
This is a new start for the female hero, the Shero, if you will. Women are not likely to be seen as the weaker sex. Not as long as Honey can manage without Bunny, thank you.
