Befikre is Hindi cinema breaking out of years of self-restraint

The national anthem ran shorter than I expected. I stood at attention. Before I stood up, I’d toyed with the idea of clasping my hands behind my back or in front, like at a funeral, but in the end I decided to go with the classic pose: hands straight by my sides, back arched, chest puffed out.

The national anthem, Tagore’s song, was over as quick as an ad jingle. I was just getting into it when this abridged version suddenly ended. Anti-climax before the film had even begun.

I sat down to watch Befikre. The patriotic fervour inside me had just about subsided when the kissing began on screen. It’s something that the esteemed court should have thought about. You play the national anthem before a sports event — it makes sense. The team stands. The crowd stands. You’re here to support your country against another country.

But a film you cannot control. I mean theatres show all kinds of cinema from Malayalam “sex education” films to gangster movies filled with expletives. You don’t know what’s going to happen. There is something deeply incongruous about playing the national anthem in this context.

Befikre begins. Shot after shot in the casting credits is a couple kissing. Full on. On the lips. Tongue on tongue. Kids are kissing. Old people are kissing. Middle-aged couples are kissing. The audience is shocked into silence. Our culture has gone to the French dogs and is now wagging its tail gleefully.

This celebration of kissing in Befikre is unprecedented. We had some lip-on-lip action earlier but it passed in a matter of seconds. In Befikre, director Aditya Chopra, whose father, Yashji, was the father of Indian kissing — two roses gently swaying in the wind — has risen in rebellion.

There are many ways of reading this kissing revolution. It’s as if after years and years of repression, Chopra decided: let’s just make this film an unending kissing sequence after which everyone will be so blasé about kissing that people will stop noticing it altogether. The censors seemed to demur, passing the film with a U/A certificate. Thank god I don’t have kids.

Befikre is Hindi cinema breaking out of years of self-restraint. It’s a married man throwing a big party when his wife goes on holiday. I am free! I can do what I want! Let’s riot.

Befikre is worth watching if you, like me, believe that the movies are about watching big beautiful people sizzle and smoulder on screen.

Long-limbed Vaani Kapoor is unbearably hot. So is Ranveer Singh. If you watch very carefully you will also catch Ranveer butt-naked. I swear it was there — it was blink and miss but it was there.

The dialogue crackles like starch in this cheerful, nonchalant film about two 21st century lovers romancing and sexing it up in Paris. The chemistry between the lead pair is pure biology. Only the jokes keep it real.

Ranveer is convincing as the quintessential Delhi boy who has sex on his mind all the time and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about French civilisation and the sophistications that it stands for.

His tomfoolery and hamming will remind you of Shah Rukh in his younger days, and will also remind you of the perils of too much body building. One of Shah Rukh’s biggest strengths was that he did not have an underwear model’s body.

Ranveer does and that prevents him from having that boy-next-door charm that Shahrukh had, and which would allow the latter to get away with anything, even murder. But Ranveer has a loutish charm, which works well here.

Befikre is fresh in that it doesn’t go in for mawkishness or filmi drama. Love is served straight up, with the attendant ups and downs. Befikre is man and woman fighting out the love game as equals. Both say what’s on their minds. You get on with it. Pragmatic confusion triumphs idealised emotion.

Underneath the don’t-give-a-damn exterior lurk some old-style emotions. But at no point do the film’s characters play an old-fashioned courtship game. A banker enters the script at some stage to represent “classic” values but it’s not his film. That character belongs to the past.

Love is tacky, love is sex and sex is sex but love is definitely not worth killing yourself over. That’s the message I came away with. A pretty accurate summary of love in post-modern times.

Love is not boring role-playing between sexes: "I play coy girl, you play protective man." Love is supreme friendship. Love is frolicking in buddyland. Love is two people being best friends (maybe for a year/ maybe for life) — friends who can keep each other entertained 24X7.

Each time I go to see a film I find a scowling couple outside the exit. After Fan I overheard a boy complain to his girlfriend: “Saara mood kharab kar diya’. After Nil Battey Sannata, same thing.

Each time I feel for the filmmaker. Indians are so grumpy you want to shake them and say: “What do you want, man?” It’s just a film, not demonetisation. Be Befikre yo!

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

Also read: Befikre shows casual sex is aloo ka parantha with a French kiss