BHUBANESWAR: The Friday release, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, starring the father-daughter duo Anil Kapoor and, Sonam Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao, promises to give moviegoers a bittersweet love story with a lesbian character at the centre stage.
Netizens have already lavished praises on Sonam Kapoor for playing the lesbian role with many saying that this is the first lesbian story by the Hindi movie industry.
These last few weeks have seen movies like Uri: The Surgical Strike and Kangana Ranaut’s Manikarnika. While the former is an army-war movie, the other is an epic biographical period depicting the valour of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi.
Both the movies bank on patriotism and thus the Sonam Kapoor starrer will be the first big budget movie of the year to break the mould.
Orissa POST interacted with some of the city-based LGBTQ supporters and recorded their views on this new release.
Sabyasachi Satpathy, a fashion designer, who had played a gay character in a web series said the audience has evolved and thus Indian cinema is also undergoing metamorphosis. “Earlier, same-sex love was something laughed or mocked but now they have become serious subjects and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Lagaa just manifests that,” Satpathy pointed out.
Indubitably, the representation of the LGBTQ community on celluloid has been a tedious one. Often the subject has been comical or presented in a derogatory manner. However, movies like Kapoor and Sons, Veere Di Wedding and even Aligarh among others have strived to show homosexual characters as they are, without making them into nothing more than an accessory on screen.
Director Amartya Bhattacharya, who has showcased lesbian relationship in his movie Capital I, said, “I think homosexuality and heterosexuality are two words which create a lot of discrimination. Love is not gender-bound and neither is sexuality. That I’m not a gay shouldn’t provoke me to believe that homosexuality is bad or abnormal.” He admitted that though in his movie Capital I he has chosen the subject but he is not a propagandist.
City based trans-model Ayesha Behera said after the Supreme Court judgement, same-sex relationship has been decriminalised and love is accepted the way it is. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga is the most unexpected romance of the year, she added.
It may be mentioned here that last year the apex court scrapped Section 377.
Bijaya Biswal, organiser of city’s first Pride Parade, said it’s a great change to witness. “Bollywood has been feeding us conventional love stories— straight couples— so the movie is not a run of the mill and hopefully would help in breaking stereotypes,” he added.
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP