Movie Review: Queen

Director: Vikas Bahl

 

Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Rajkumar Rao and Lisa Haydon

 

Till now, in our films, whenever a  small-town girl got ditched by her fiancé at the last minute, she a)committed suicide, b) went mad, c) the hero ‘rescued’ her by offering his hand in marriage or d) she ran away from home. Rani Mehra (Kangana)  decides to go on her European honeymoon alone. Everything has been paid for, so why waste it. It’s not that she isn’t hurt.  The world she knew just caved in. But there is a stubborn practical streak in her (as it is in most real girls) that screams at her to claw her way out of the rubble. And she goes ahead and does so admirably. From a gawky duckling hailing from Rajouri backwaters she turns into an elegant Eurasian swan, ready for everything and not dependent on somebody else on her happiness.

 

Her journey is akin to that of Alice in Wonderland. The European rabbit hole that she finds herself in is full of sights and sounds that look unreal and fantastic. She can’t even cross roads at first and is hugely uncomfortable with the all the PDA which is a part of everyday life there. She slowly comes to grips with the strangeness of it all. Vijayalakshmi (Lisa Haydon) an Indian of mixed parentage, whom she meets in Paris, helps her shed some of her inhibitions. Her Amsterdam sojourn has her sharing dorm with a Japanese, Russian and a Black French guy because of a mix-up and she ends up making friends for life. She also learns that she has the skills to fend for herself if she wanted to.

 

Vikas Bahl has made the situations, -- from the grandmother offering her take on life, to Rani’s sacrilegious attitude to burping (nice girls don’t burp) and booze and sex (that’s taboo too for sure), and her fiance's sudden volte face all seem real. Nothing is forced – the humour and the pathos emerge out naturally. And he hasn’t been judgmental or taken sides. He has gone ahead and shown that there are so many ways one can lead one’s  life. There are no definite rights or wrongs. What’s important is to do away with your blinkers.

 

It’s Kangana’s film from frame one. The way she flits from one aspect of her character to another without breaking stride shows her maturity as an actor. Her efforts make you clap for Rani’s small and big victories, you root for her character to come up trumps and are glad about the glorious transformation at the end. Another revelation is Lisa Haydon. She gives a class act as an uninhibited single mother who thinks of life as one long party. Wish more good roles should come her way. And better directors. Rajkumar Rao shows why he is considered as one of our better actors today as he manages to grab attention even in the unsympathetic role as Kangana’s caddish fiancé.

 

Amit Trivedi’s score acts as a companion piece to the situations. Camerawork by Late Bobby Singh and Siddharth Diwan and editing by Abhijit Kokate and Anurag Kashyap  too is impeccable. Queen is definitely a step in right direction for Indian cinema.  Let’s hope it paves the way for more story-centric films in future. After Vidya and Priyanka, Kangana has staked her claim as the right choice for gutsy roles. And that’s a good thing too.