Review of "Girlfriend"

Lesbians aren’t the only homos reduced to cliché in Girlfriend. Sapna first meets Rahul when she’s dragged to a party by the most annoying of her nelly queen friends. Loud shirts, limp wrists, high-pitched exuberance—classic fags are sprinkled into the movie to act as comic foil. They’re a girl’s best friend and the perfect confidantes, as trustworthy as a eunuch in a harem. That’s why Rahul pretends to be gay, to gain Sapna’s trust in order to seduce her. His scheme is eventually revealed, but she could never stay mad at such a dashing catch.

Tanya’s special love for Sapna makes her possessive and protective. She fends off the creeps who paw at Sapna in a bar, but then the two ladies hit the dance floor for a musical interlude with lewd boogying. It’s a Penthouse-letter-comes-to-life performance, and it entertains the leering guys who Tanya just clobbered. “Come closer, let us show you what real love is,” the duo sings. Who knew that real love is two skimpy-skirted hussies bumping rumps?

We’re given evidence of Tanya and Sapna’s love in a flashback to a night of drunken experimentation. On the morning after, Tanya wants to save their friendship and claims she doesn’t remember a thing (even though she clearly just got enough masturbation material to set her up for life). A regretful but self-deluding Sapna vows never to drink again. The flashback happens when Sapna fesses up to Rahul, who accuses her of the Sapphic sin. She pleads innocent with the vapid defense, “when I’m asleep, I’m unconscious.” Maybe this is what later sparks Rahul’s nightmare/fantasy of Tanya putting the moves on Sapna when she’s clearly passed out—which doesn’t exactly make for some hot lezzie sex.

The sex in Girlfriend is soft-core and suggestive, with lots of caressing and nuzzling but no kissing or groping. Tanya and Sapna’s steamy scenes amount to a lot of tumbling about in black satin sheets. It’s more sleazy than it is sexy. These scenes still manage to be explicit: Reading between the lines is hardly necessary when Tanya comes up for air from the general vicinity of Sapna’s private parts. Or when she pulls Sapna’s hand under the covers and guides it vaguely towards her own naughty bits.

Most of the sex takes place in Tanya’s or Rahul’s equally tortured imaginations. This lets Rajdan deliver the titillating girly action his audience expects while still reinforcing the idea that a conscious, sober good girl like Sapna would never actually stray from straightness. She has to be lured by a lesbian on the prowl. That love dares to speak its name when the defiant Tanya finally drops the L word. Then it’s all horror flick melodrama, the camera quickly zooming in and out, the music thumping ominously.

Girlfriend is the first Indian film to deal with lesbianism since Deepa Mehta’s Fire eight years ago. While the newer release is less serious and easy to mock, both films have sparked violent protests in India from homophobic zealots. Unlike Fire, however, Girlfriend has also been attacked by South Asian queers who resent the negative portrayal. The director may claim that his intention was “to start a discussion about this subject, and create an awareness in society,” but he doesn’t exactly demonstrate sensitivity toward his subject matter.

And that’s nothing to laugh off when you consider the grim context for this dialogue, as painted by Tejal Shah in India’s Mid-Day newspaper:

“Every time I hear of another lesbian suicide, another girl who hanged herself for being teased about her 'best' friend, another hijra woman raped in police custody, another woman sent for shock treatment and aversion therapy to cure her of her homosexuality, another couple put under house arrest by their parents when they find out about their same-sex love, I will think of this film and I will be reminded of the power that Bollywood wields in creating a mass consciousness of one sort or the other.”