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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:
