C — 34 — Movie Review — Veere Di Wedding

It was indeed a treat to the eyes to see four leading ladies take the center stage in a commercial Hindi cinema, successfully breaking records at the box office! Our ladies were shown drinking, smoking, taking agencies of their sex life and in general embracing their womanhood.It took 150 years for Bollywood to realise that four leading ladies can share the screen same scene space as friends without a man holding them together. A man may not have been holding them together, but what was utterly disappointing in Veere, was to see all their conversations revolving around them! A website conducted the Bechtel test on the movie. The Bechdel Test poses three questions:
1. Does the film have two or more (named) female characters?
2. Do these characters talk to each other?
3. If so, do they discuss something other than a man?
While the film aced the first two criteria, they miserably failed the third, as there was surprisingly not a single scene, where they did not discuss their associations with a man, reducing the potential of female camaraderie. Their other topics of discussion were, bitching about aged women gossiping, which is the common stereotype our society has built for women, and bashing and abusing a guy who did not agree to kiss Sonam Kapoor, thus taking a hypocritical stance on consent. Swara Bhaskar was shown masturbating on the screen thus claiming her sexual agency, which was indeed a power move, although that narrative was also peripheral to her having a dry spell with her husband.
In all, Veere di wedding was a feminist within the allowance of the market. Our Queen Bee, Kareena Kapoor went on record to claim that she is NOT a feminist, making us realise how the cushioning of nepotism has made our stars oblivious. Bollywood has a long way to go, and all I am asking you all is to hold on to your magnifying glasses and look beyond what is shown on the screen. Objects in the screen are hazier than they appear.