In one of 2012's best conceived
scenes, an old woman and her daughter-in-law (Kamlesh Gill and Dolly
Ahluwalia), who bicker and drip sarcasm by day, sit together in their modest
Lajpat Nagar drawing room and get drunk. It's a nightly ritual, we learn, and
such a refreshing break from stereotype! In the same film, the hero sits
at his girlfriend's feet and gives her a pedicure in his mother's beauty
parlour. The film was Vicky Donor, a critically and commercially successful comedy written by Juhi Chaturvedi.
At the end of six months if there are half-a-dozen films worth talking about in Hindi cinema, you can call it a good year. This one certainly is. Notwithstanding the fact that Rowdy Rathore has raked in over Rs 100 crore, Housefull 2 was a big draw and Ram Gopal Varma continues to enjoy the inexplicable patronage of Amitabh Bachchan (Department), overall there's been much to cheer about.
Habib Faisal's Ishaqzaade is another sordid chapter in the systematic subjugation of the Hindi film heroine. The harder she tries to rise above the suffocating confines of patriarchy, the severer her punishment as Zoya (Parineeti Chopra), the feisty protagonist learns to her peril. For the first half of the film, she is a fighter, a spunky college topper undaunted by the disadvantage of her birth -- born to a traditional Muslim family with political clout in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, surrounded by gun-totting brothers and an entire town full of petty goons and passive bystanders, none of whom cares much about the plight of women, leave alone upholding or nurturing an ambitious girl.
