Ram Gopal Varma's First Lesbian Crime Film Dangerous Is About Bikinis, Kissing And Fake Passion; Twitter Is Up In Arms

Netizens are outraged by Ram Gopal Varma's half-baked, no make that laugh-baked, theory on homosexuality in his new lesbian film, Dangerous.

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Ram Gopal Varma's First Lesbian Crime Film Dangerous Is About Bikinis, Kissing And Fake Passion; Twitter Is Up In Arms
There is  nothing that this  filmmaker who  once made brilliant films like  Satya and  Company,  won’t do  for publicity. So when my friend Ramu, known to you all as the once-famous Ram Gopal Varma, sent me the trailer of  what he described as his  first lesbian/crime action film I knew  there would  be trouble.

And I was right. Dangerous looks like  an untruthful take on lesbianism. The trailer shows us two  young women, mostly in  bikinis, kissing one another with a faked passion. We are told they  turned into lovers because their respective boyfriends treated them badly.

Hang on. Is Ramu suggesting that homosexuality can be brought on by disappointment  with heterosexuality? Something like the logic behind, ‘My wife doesn’t sleep with me, so I’ll sleep with other women’? Is this director, who considering his age should know better, suggesting that lesbianism is  
a form of  backlash to  insensitivity in same-sex relationship?

That’s what the trailer suggests. And the netizens have understandably  gone ballistic. They are outraged by Ramu’s half-baked, no make that laugh-baked, theory on homosexuality. One Tweet reads, “While I know reporting a tweet won't cancel the film but we should mass report RGV's movie poster tweet about some misrepresented lesbian crime drama. It's outright homophobic.”

Maybe this is  the  reaction  he wanted. But  I wish he had watched the great films on lesbianism that have been  released in recent times outside India:  Francis Lee’s Ammonite, Mona Fastvold’s  The World To Come,Alice Wu’s The Half Of It   and  Yorgos  Lanthimos’  The Favourite.

Or better still , nearer home Deepa Mehta’s Fire the  monumental game-changer which she made 25 years ago, and is still one of the most relevant films on lesbian love.

I remember Gulzar Saab once telling me that in  a  good lovemaking scene the audience should be able to see beyond  the gender and the physical  presence.

In Dangerous all we see are two female bodies painted  all over the frames.

Pity the two actresses  Naina  Ganguly and Apsara Rani. Their  careers are over even before they started.






Image source: Twitter/RGVzoomin, SpotboyE archives
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