Warning: spoilers
Girlfriend,
the much-ballyhooed
2004 Bollywood flick about a love triangle recently
released on DVD, offers up some familiar lessons: 1) Women’s
friendships are rife with jealousy and rivalry; 2) Lesbians
are man-hating psychopaths; 3) They are that way because
of childhood sexual abuse; and 4) They prey on innocent
straight girls who only succumb to their seduction if they’ve
had a little too much to drink.
In
director Karan Rajdan’s film, Tanya (Isha Koppikar)
and Sapna (Amrita Arora) are former college roommates who
now share a large beach house and a small bed. Tanya is
a hard-working jeweler whose pay doesn’t quite cover
the rent, let alone a separate bed for her “best friend,”
who apparently doesn’t work. To make ends meet, Tanya
is a secret streetfighter who can beat even the burliest
of thugs at kickboxing. While Tanya is away on business,
Sapna meets Rahul (Ashish Choudhary) and falls in love.
When
Tanya returns to find a boyfriend in the picture, her jealousy
rears its ugly green head. Her efforts to separate the new
lovers so she can keep Sapna to herself fill the remaining
2 1/2 hours of the film.
According
to the movie’s official
website, “There are hidden desires in Tanya. Wild
desires, which lead her to clash with Rahul in a fight to
the wild finish.” Tanya’s “wild desires”
are conveyed in her cheetah-print mini-dress, and in how
she scans the horizon for Sapna like a tiger stalks its
prey. Her “clash with Rahul” is subtly rendered
in his scowls, frowns and other facial contortions. It also
includes beating the hapless boyfriend in a race that must
have required special camera work to disguise his obvious
lead. From there it escalates to a more violent sort of
beating, and then on to all-out murderous rage. And the
so-called wild finish has our lezzie villain plunging from
a window to her inevitable death—an ending that’s
neither positive nor original.
Negative
stereotypes abound in Girlfriend. The
female leads are codependent man-haters: “Both are
into male bashing,” according to the website. “Whatever
Tanya does, Sapna follows.” Sapna plays giggling Barbie
to Tanya’s sultry villain. The former is always wearing
white or bubblegum pink while the latter wears wild animal
prints or black.
Tanya
hates men, yet she supposedly wants to be one: She rides
a motorcycle, is handy with a plumber’s wrench, and
even pretends to pee standing up—just to mess with
Rahul, who looks on with Sapna in horror until the “joke”
is revealed. Tanya later cuts her hair short once she gets
down to ass-kicking business.
And
the movie conflates gender identity and sexual orientation:
When Tanya confesses she’s a lesbian, she has to elaborate
with “a boy trapped in a girl’s body.”
Referring to Tanya, Rahul tells Sapna “She is your
husband. One who controls you. She is not your girlfriend.
She is a guy.”
