Bad parenting makes one a husband stealer?

It's a big India night on Sunday as Cannes celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema with the screening of Bombay Talkies and a gala dinner to follow. The sun peeped out in the morning but there was a brisk wind and meteorologists forecast rain in the evening which means it's going to be difficult for our Bollywood beauties with their flimsy saris and backless cholis. But they're brave, our stars, chins up, prepared to brave the cold and the rain, for that one photo op on the Cannes red carpet.

So much has been written about Bombay Talkies in India that it would be futile to re-critique it. Suffice to say that there are four separate films within this film made by Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banerjee. In a departure from the norm, The Hindu decided to ask the four directors to react to the worst things said or written about their films and this is what they groused about:

Karan Johar: "I was really angered by a blog that appeared on a website called the First Post. The blogger questioned the depiction of the homosexual character and why he had to be the home breaker who bit the hand that fed him. And it was just a ridiculous, idiotic piece of writing because the blogger did not understand the layers and the complexities of the film. In India if you are depicting a homosexual character you are expected to portray him as a victim in order to express empathy. But my take was completely different. I was looking at the issue of inadequate parenting. A macho father who calls his son a eunuch, a man who can't tell the difference between a homosexual and a eunuch and who thinks he can beat his son into normalcy. That is parental abuse, which messes up the child big time. Now that child grows up to become a destructive human being and he doesn't hesitate to seduce his friend's husband. So it's a commentary on parenting and the blogger who was extremely venomous had failed to understand the film!"