Aparna Sen’s Sonata turns eight

There is no sannata in Sonata. The three protagonists talk endlessly. Nothing really ‘happens’ in the 90-minute celluloid discourse on post-menopausal sexuality and other related topics on how to be a woman past her prime, without guilt and the accompanying crimes.

Where are the Indian films that celebrate middle-aged women’s sexuality? Sonata is the psychological exploration of three unmarried women facing a mid-life crisis -Aruna Chaturvedi, Dolon Sen and Subhadra Parekh, a professor, a banker and a journalist. The 103-minute film revolves around the emotional ups and downs of these three friends culminating in an event of global magnitude, confronted with which, their everyday joys and sorrows pale into insignificance.

Advertisement

Shabana Azmi and Aparna Sen are self consciously stagey, like two people, two women, who have been so close to one another for such a long time that they can afford to ‘act’ in front of one another without the risk of being misconstrued or causing permanent damage to their mutual relationship. The fact that Shabana and Aparna have been friends in real life for as long as they are shown to be close in this film, helps imbue their characters and their shared relationship with warmth and whimsy that are the opposite of social etiquette and flimsy. These women can put their feet up on the table, belch and fart, and talk their hearts out. Shabana has strength playing the irrepressible crazily self-serving Dolon Sen. She is at once mercurial and feisty, deeply compassionate and unrelentingly obstinate. The way she dances around in chirpy splendour, preening and posturing, sobbing and screeching in the perfectly appointed living room that she has shared with her prim friend for 20 years, is a sight to behold.

What a radiant beauty Aparna Sen continues to be. Oh yes, the camera loves her. And she loves it back.

Says Aparna Sen, “In this film, I attempted to explore various aspects of the feminine gaze. To make that exploration wider in its scope, I introduced two minor characters apart from the three single women who are the protagonists – a maid, thereby cutting across class borders– and a transgender woman. None of these characters were there in the original play by Mahesh Elkunchwar from which the film is adapted. I also changed the ending by bringing into the lives of these women a tragedy of global magnitude, which not only places their personal anxieties in perspective but also strengthens the bond of friendship among them.”

Aparna  Sen’s real-life husband Kalyan Sen was yanked out of his academic kingdom to play his wife’s long-standing love interest. This is not the first time Aparna has invited her husband to face the camera. In Paroma Aparna’s then-husband Mukul Sharma had played Raakhee Gulzar’s lover.

This is Shabana’s fourth film with Aparna Sen and one that she’s really proud of. “I enjoyed playing my character Dolon Sen. It’s a great part ….wilful and funny with quicksilver mood, and she’s uninhibited. I truly enjoyed the character’s abandonment. Dolon is a lovely part and it was very generous of Rina(Aparna Sen) to give it to me rather than keep it for herself. Dolon is quicksilver in her changing moods, whimsical, childlike demanding and yet warm and loving. Hindi cinema mein kahaan milte hain aise shades?”

Lilette Dubey playing a boisterous journalist with an abusive boyfriend joins the two women midway. She is as usual a rabble-rousing life force, breaking into a jig to the sound of Babu dheere chalna…must every onscreen feisty woman dance only to that song?….in brief, a predictable misfit.

When together, the three women share an easy fluent robust camaraderie that indicates many years of unconditional compatibility. You come away from Sonata with impressions of femininity way removed from what cinema has taught us over the centuries.

Though the exterior surface of the trailer gleams with giggles, there are undercurrents of tremendous frisson and anguish in Aparna Sen’s work Sonata.

While Aparna Sen plays a woman who has turned her back on love, Lilette Dubey plays a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. Shabana Azmi has the most complex role as she unravels layer after layer of closeted yearnings through her character.

Sonata works because the trio of actresses are as free-spirited in real life as they are on screen. The trio of women guffawing over the fact that they are not ‘even’ feminists…But beneath that self-deprecatory laughter is the emptiness that this genre has faced in India. Where are the Indian films that celebrate middle-aged women’s sexuality?

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}