Pataakha Reviews | BO updates

At the core, the sibling rivalry is used as a metaphor of the constant war between India and Pakistan. While watching the film, the one question that will pop is as to why the two sisters hate each other so much and why the two look like as if they have not taken a bath for days. Their father, too, is searching for the answer for the same. Dipper comes up with an answer, that compares the two sisters with the warring nations of India and Pakistan. He says that the two nations have been at war for over 70 years, but no one knows why they are fighting or how it started. Nevertheless, they always find a reason to be at each other's throat.

The film helmed by Vishal Bharadwaj is a simple tale, which poses as an analogy of a major issue. The film is raw, colourful and dusty and definitely worth a watch.

RATING: 4/5

Vishal Bhardwaj's Pataakha is pitched as an allegory about nations riven by mutual conflict and hatred (India and Pakistan, North and South Korea), but it works far better as a rural burlesque about perennially warring sisters. The lead characters demand no empathy or identification, the acting is high-pitched and exaggerated in parts, the dialogue has the coarsensess of sand, and the humour is twisted and cruel.

The film is based on the Hindi short story Do Behenein, by Charan Singh Pathik, and is set in a village in Rajasthan where the main form of entertainment is the scrapes between Champa (Radhika Madan) and Genda (Sanya Malhotra). The sisters cannot survive without pulling each other's hair or trading taunts at regular intervals. Their long-suffering father Shantibhushan (Vijay Raaz) can barely keep the peace, and he doesn't make matters easy by running up a debt with lascivious businessman Patel (Saanand Verma).

Either sister will do, says Patel as he demands his pound of flesh. Champa and Genda, therefore, do well for themselves by catching the eye, respectively, of Jagan (Namit Das) and Vishnu (Abhishek Duhan). In a plot development that was unfortunately revealed in the trailer itself, the lovers turn out to be brothers, locking the sisters into a shared domesticity that neither can tolerate.

Playing a combination of spoiler, catalyst, mischief-maker and confidante is village itinerant Dipper (Sunil Grover), who is always around to extricate the sisters from a difficult situation. The movie's conceit depends entirely on its performances, and while every actor rises to the challenge, Sunil Grover hogs the screen with his superbly timed entries and solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Ranjan Palit's colourful and energetic camerawork captures the flavour of the locations. But did the lead actresses need brownface make-up to appear convincing as rural women? It's unfortunate that an otherwise progressive director, who upends mainstream conventions in his films, should have fallen back on such a worn trick to convey authenticity.

Sanya Malhotra and Radhika Madan would have worked just fine without mud-coloured complexions. The young actresses whip up the dust in their sequences together, and they submit to all manner of humiliation. Bhardwaj tries to forcibly inject energy in many sequences by quite literally making the characters run around the place, but the actresses do fine even in the quieter scenes, in which Genda and Champa evolve from caricatures into women that we might actually know.

Bhardwaj's screenplay sets up the action well, but the movie slumps in its middle section, which follows Champa and Genda as they grow older and not necessarily wiser. There isn't enough material to warrant 134 minutes, and the tone gets uneven in the later sections. The characters of the husbands, ably played by Namit Das and Abhishek Duhan, get barely any play. A crisper running length would have ensured a more explosive impact for Bhardwaj's latest, and welcome, foray into black humour with a political subtext.

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Radhika Madan, Sunil Grover, Namit Das

What I love about Vishal Bhardwaj is that he is a champion of flawed characters. Bollywood's usual wholesome, pretty people who live happily ever after don't interest him. His movies are propelled by extreme personalities who are racked by doubt and fear, lust and greed. Think of Maqbool and Nimmi in Maqbool or Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes in 7 Khoon Maaf or Ghazala Meer in Haider or Julia in Rangoon. To this pantheon of deliciously twisted protagonists, Vishal adds Champa Kumari or Badki and Genda Kumari or Chhutki, sisters in a Rajasthan village who routinely try to kill each other.

We first see them when they are toddlers exchanging curses among other things, one calls the other loose motions. Within minutes, they have grown up and are exchanging blows. Anything can trigger war beedis, boyfriends, differing ambitions. Badki dreams of running a dairy while Chhutki wants to be a teacher and run a school. Their hapless father, only known as bechara bapu, tries to keep the peace while Dipper, the local troublemaker, does his best to keep the fight going. Because, he says, it's entertaining.




Perhaps for him but sadly, not so much for us. Pataakha is based on a short story called Do Behnein by Charan Singh Pathik. Vishal, aided well by his actors and crew, creates a colorful, textured world. Sanya Malhotra and Radhika Madan, who makes her film debut, work ferociously hard to become Badki and Chhutki. Both are fine actors who nail the difficult dialect but this is also a physically demanding role the sisters are constantly punching each other, rolling in mud or screaming. With blackened teeth and strong body language, they become the characters.

But this startling transformation doesn't have enough impact because for much of Pataakha, the sisters stay one note. It's admirable that Vishal has the courage to create an entire film around such unlikable characters Badki and Chhutki are rude, headstrong, stubborn and spiteful. You don't often see women like this in Hindi cinema. The problem is that they aren't nuanced or particularly interesting. After the first hour, you start to feel like you are trapped in a room with two wailing banshees. It's absolutely exhausting.

Vijay Raaz as the weary bapu and a nicely sleazy Sunil Grover as Dipper also make a valiant effort but there simply isn't enough to bite into. Like 7 Khoon Maaf, which was also based on a short story, Pataakha is a slim story stretched till it snaps. Dipper explains that the sisters are like India and Pakistan, born from the same mother yet constantly at loggerheads. But the metaphor weighs too heavily on the thin narrative. Vishal's music with lyrics by Gulzar beautifully captures the boisterous, vibrant atmosphere of the film I especially enjoyed Balma' and Gali Gali'. There are a few laugh-out-loud lines but mostly Pataakha hurtles forward like a runaway train, which derails in the second half. Once the sisters are married, the story alternates between scheming and screaming. The narrative becomes even more repetitive and labored.

It's cacophony without juice or magic.

Rating: 2/5

Pataakha
Director - Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast - Sanya Malhotra, Radhika Madan, Sunil Grover, Vijay Raaz
Rating - 4/5

These sisters are named after flowers, but don't let that fool you. These are duelling sticks of dynamite who steal each others stolen beedis and spark each other's fuses. They are either on the warpath or standing by, demanding to be offended. They are flammable girls with savage tongues, sharp as maanja used to cut down rival kites flying over a neighbour's roof. The garish swear words they spit out about noseless witches and wives of frogs are straight out of folklore. (Do curses and hexes cancel each other out?)

Pataakha is Vishal Bhardwaj's adaptation of a short story by Charan Singh Pathik. In the beginning, it felt a bit flat to me. Too many Hindi films set in small towns and unfamiliar villages eagerly milk dialect and surroundings for laughs, but Bhardwaj keeps it raw. The dialogues steer clear of predictable punchlines and it takes a while to get used to a film that refuses to try too hard. Coming from a master director, this feels like a minor film about two minors, daughters of a miner till we get to see what these firecrackers are dreaming about.

One wants to go to school to open one of her own, the other wants to stay out of school to start her own dairy. Their eyes gleam when looking at blackboards and pasteurisation facilities respectively, and they are ready to battle for their ambitions. They happen also to be highly sought after women, made eligible by their feistiness. Both girls first physically overpower their suitors, and then choose to relent. They decide when they want the first flush of rural romance, their courtship taking place against the backdrop of motorcycling daredevils and lassi stores. They are in charge.

Here is the film's plot: two sisters fight. The short story Do Behnein is six pages long, and starts only as Pataakhaenters its second half. Bhardwaj turns these warring sisters into a metaphor for India and Pakistan, countries locked in an endless cycle of sniping. It is an unsubtle analogy but crudely effective, much like a street-play. The metaphor peaks with the girls' hapless father, stranded in no man's land. Vijay Raaz plays this father of nations with a defeated dignity. It is a fragile, affecting performance in a film full of louder ones, as if he is too tired. His shoulders are slumped and the effort to be fair has worn him down. Once in a while he smiles, like when delousing both daughters at once with the dexterity of a tabla player.

The narrator is no such sad figure. Nicknamed Dipper because of an errant eye and played with roguish sleaziness by Sunil Grover he is a remnant of Bhardwaj's infatuation with Shakespeare, a troublemaker equal parts Iago and Puck. Like a wrestling promoter, he starts and celebrates the biggest sister wars, and concocts harebrained schemes with nearly sadistic abandon. As I said, it's a street-play.

The elder sister, Champa Kumari, frequently bites her lip. She's a big sister defined by her younger sister forever called Badki' instead of by name and when stealing her little sister's western-wear, makes sure to properly cover the sleeping Chhutki' up with a blanket. She has her own entourage and sits among them at the town fair with a pair of binoculars, scoping out (and immediately dismissing) men. Radhika Madan positively shines in this bossy role, unwavering in dialect and determination. The way she bites her dupatta in mock-shyness, the way she boasts about her smartphone, the way she brandishes a clothes-iron... She's priceless.

Then there's Genda Kumari, the younger sister, called Marigold' by her English-speaking Army boyfriend. (He has a different nickname for her when she's angrier: Bloody Mary.) She is perpetually poised to strike. Even when simply checking to see if Badki has a fever, Chhutki's method is to smack her on the forehead. She is a feckless girl, grinning her widest when she comes up with suitably nuclear abuse, and Sanya Malhotra plays this character with unhinged enthusiasm. At one point we see her in school, learning active and passive voice, and I dare only marvel at the kind of profanity she will someday conjure. It's a delightfully scrappy character, and Malhotra appears to be a fearless actress.

The music doesn't get in the way. The soundtrack works when underlining the story, but the songs can't quite stand on its own. A glossy track from the trailers (featuring the glossy Malaika Arora Khan) has rightly been excised from this gloriously grimy production. Pataakha is a film at odds with polish. This is a down and dirty quickie, and yet it emerges more resonant than many films that advertise their ambition across their posters.

The details are delightful. The turns of phrase are both rollicking and unassumingly poetic. Badki, appalled by the ticket prices for a new film, wonders if this time Salman Khan an actor famous for climactically removing his shirt will take his pants off as well. Later, the narrator compares the girls to balloons while calling their nightmares pin-pricks, that make them go boom.

In one scene, with the sisters going at each other tooth and slipper, there is a show of their two daughters. The young girls have their faces frozen in fear, sickened by this vulgar physicality. These kids may well be a stand-in for citizens watching diplomatic discussions between the neighbour countries break down yet again. They watch, embarrassed and mortified, as their mothers fight.

India claims to loathe Pakistan, but with the kind of undying vehemence that is reserved exclusively for family. We may, for instance, crow about conquering Pakistan in every World Cup cricket match we've played, but back when they faced England in the 1992 final, India cheered Imran Khan's boys in green. If you want to beat them, get in line. They're ours.