Tumhari Sulu
Director: Suresh Triveni
Music: Various
Year: 2018
Rating: 7.0
Translation: Yours Sulu
What is enjoyable about this film is what
it doesn't try to do. There is no explosive drama, no slapstick comedy, no
action heroes, no grand musical numbers - and yet it won a bunch of awards.
Bollywood is changing. This is a simple, unambitious comedy-drama about a
small middle class family doing their best to get by in the massive city
of Mumbai where their story will go by unnoticed by nearly everyone. Just
like most of our lives. Some good moments, some bad but mainly just going
about the business of doing your job, loving your kids, taking care of your
family the best you can and always hoping for the best. A small story but
for the people involved it is everything.
Sulu (Vidya Balan) and her husband Ashok
(Manav Kaul) are strictly middle class - he has a job that brings in enough
money to live decently but by no means extravagantly - where a broken TV
causes friction because they want it replaced - Sulu is old fashioned in
her saris, her cooking and her devotion to her son and husband. But she wants
something more. What it is isn't clear - but something that will allow her
to be more than just a wife and mother. All sorts of ideas constantly come
to her - the latest being a taxi driver - but duties and reality always knock
them down.
Then through a series of slightly farfetched
events she is offered a job as a talk show host on a late night radio show.
Her parents and sisters laugh at her and tell her it is idiotic and her initially
supportive husband slowly gives way to doubts and resentments while at the
same time he sees his job being assaulted by a new jerk boss who is taking
his manhood away. And her show is a hit with the lonely as she talks to them
late into the night making them laugh and think and have a few minutes of
connecting to someone.
And that is basically it - how it is all
resolved. The film is real life in which the conversations and humor and
anger spring naturally. It is really carried by the very fine acting of the
two leads and excellent support from Neha Dhupia as the radio station manager.
Vidya is a fine actress and has often taken on roles that are far from glamorous
and is seemingly comfortable being slightly overweight in an industry where
most of the actresses are sleek like racing cars. She deservedly won the
Filmfare award as best actress. This the debut of director/writer Suresh
Triveni and is another sign that a new generation of directors are changing
the direction of Bollywood - or I should say not so much changing as expanding
the sorts of films they have because there are still plenty of old fashioned
films being made. There is an assortment of songs but most of them play unobtrusively
over scenes of the film.
