ENTERTAINMENT
Dare to bare
Bollywood has opened the door to reveal what happens inside the bedroom. The intimacy is much more explicit
Jasmine Singh

Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur created an uproar when he showed Seema Biswas, lead actress of his film Bandit Queen, bathing half-naked near a river. Audience thronged in huge numbers to watch the scene, which they thought was too bold for a Hindi film. Some even sought it to be titillating; something that didn’t leave a good taste with the family audience that had gone to watch the film. Years later, Surveen Chawla and Sushant Singh enact a love-making scene in Hate Story 2, vividly revealing the intimacy of the act and taking it to the final completion. What one heard in the movie theatre were hushed glees and an awkward whistle from a group of boys!

Well, Bollywood has successfully opened the door to ‘what happens inside the bedroom’. It is no longer the steamy scenes, showing of cleavage, or lip lock that classifies as sex in films, it is the love-making which is now seen as the new ‘in’ sex element of the films. Films like Trishna starring the Slumdog Millionaire beauty Freida Pinto, Jism, starring Sunny Leone, Shilpa Shukla in BA Pass and Paoli Dam and Surveen Chawla from Hate Story and Hate Story 2 have revealed more than just skin.

The actresses have comfortably enacted the love-making scenes like any other scene in the film. What is more surprising is the reaction of the audience, which hasn’t found anything bizarre in it. Is it the new-age mindset of the movie buffs or have films comfortably reduced the distance between what happens inside and outside our private space.

When director Mahesh Bhatt cast Sunny Leone for his film Jism, the industry took it as an offshoot of one of his eccentricities. As for Sunny Leone, she soon found acceptance with her charming looks and great body assets. Thereafter, whatever she did on screen was simply termed as sexy. Shares Mahesh Bhatt, "What is wrong in showing a beautiful actress ? Also, I don’t understand the hue and cry about showing love-making scenes in films. Is this something that has come from aliens, isn’t it essence of our existence." Coming from Mahesh Bhatt, this seems like the order of the day.

However, if one was to look back, showman Raj Kapoor went all out to show her female leads, both Zeenat Aman and Mandakini in Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Ram Teri Ganga Maili, respectively in almost revealing dresses. This was how far the industry could go with the notion of being sexy at that time.

It is only now that the idea has become a statement, actress Shilpa Shukla, who plays a married woman teaching a boy half her age different ways to enjoy sex in the film BA Pass, doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. Everything that you know of, everything that is ‘personal’ is thrown open on the screen for you to swallow without chewing. Movie-watchers called the film soft porn. The same film went on to win critical acclaim with Shilpa walking away with a Filmfare award.

Paoli Dam, too, gave steamy performance in Hate Story. The minister making love to her in the garden brought the bedroom story to a full public view. This is, however, the point where the next film begins, which is taken forward by Surveen Chawla in Hate Story 2. The ‘dare-to-show-all’ legacy continues with the actresses being totally comfortable about it. "Yes, we do have the so-called bold acts in films these days, which are not thrown in to garner brownie points. The scene is there because the story demands it to," adds Surveen, who shares how she would want the intimate scenes to be shot in one go.

"I did feel slightly awkward for the first few minutes but, thereafter, we went ahead with the scene."

Actors from the old school, who initially saw this as a wretched image of sexuality or even go as far as calling the audience perverts, have been made to accept this as a ‘creative outburst’ shot in an ‘ethical’manner. Every act is justified by an ‘artistic’ label. Nawazuddin Siddiqqi-starrer Miss Lovely, a film based on the time when sex was sold through the horror films, has far too many bold scenes. The one that can make you slightly uncomfortable is the filming of a porn film in a dark secluded factory with Nawaz guiding the cameraman to shoot it from all angles. "I go with the script that justifies every scene. So, there is no single uncomfortable moment," says Siddiqqi.

With sex splurged all over the films these days, actors and filmmakers find it an unnecessary hullabaloo over something that is ‘creative expression or demand of the script.'

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