Bollywood Movie Marathon: Queen

December 14: Queen (2014). Directed by Vikas Bahl. Produced by Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, and Madhu Mantena. Starring Kangana Ranaut, Lisa Haydon, Rajkummar Rao, Mish Boyko, Jeffrey Chee Eng Ho, Marco Canadea.

Characters Vijaylaxmi and Rani

Thoughts while watching this: from my Facebook post: "Today's Bollywood movie was Queen, about a woman who goes on her honeymoon alone after her fiancé decides he doesn't want to marry her---two days before their wedding. The beginning was slow, and the whole idea of "self discovery through travel" was kind of cliché, but what I liked about this non-mainstream Bollywood movie was that the main character was so relatable. Plus, she had all these funny discoveries about sex which continuously surprised her and kept the movie interesting." They really were funny. One of my favorite lines was "You mean...a lip-to-lip kiss?"

(In case you are not an avid watcher of Indian films, kissing on screen is a taboo practice due to censorship early in the Indian film industry, though it has become increasingly common, especially in the past ten to twenty years. There are other reasons, like it's just not something that <older generations of> Indian people do to display affection, but that's a sweeping generalization that I  hesitate to make.)

Rani goes to a nightclub in Paris with new friend Vijaylaxmi and dances like a wild woman to a Hindi dance song. One of the first poignant moments in the film was when Rani had a flashback in the night club to a scene in which Vijay reprimands her for dancing (too erotic?). There is also a scene in which Rani's fiancé told her she shouldn't take a job, even though she is educated and qualified, because he will earn enough money for the both of them. (I'm no expert, but that sounds sexist to me.)

I think one of the reasons I liked Rani as a character was because I had been in her shoes, traveling in Paris and Amsterdam alone. Traveling alone is lonely and can be scary when you have no one to share your experiences with and you don't really have a plan. While watching, I kept thinking, "I traveled in Paris that way. I met awesome people in Amsterdam too after a negative experience."

 Major "India is great" moment: Rani sells golgappa (panipuri) on the side of a canal in Amsterdam, and people can't get enough of it.

Theme of the movie: do not let the man who let you down dictate your life or your happiness.

As I was watching Queen, I realized that it is probably a more accurate depiction of what happens when real people in India arrange to marry than anything portrayed in the flashy movies. A lot of that has to do with the amount of wealth the characters have. Rani's family has nice things, but they are not enormously wealthy. Her family's wealth appears to be fairly modest. Her fiancé Vijay is better off, but his house is no mansion. There are certainly class differences that are apparent between Rani and Vijay, and their value is apparent in certain scenes. In nearly every film I have seen, with the exception of films where certain characters are intentionally impoverished, the main characters come from enormously wealthy families or have become fairly rich themselves. Extreme wealth is the dream, right? Not so much in this movie. The dream for Rani is to give herself opportunities to grow.