Touched by Fire. Review on Leela

After long here comes a engrossing, well written and enacted, creative effort, that has won a Special Jury Award at the Reelworld Film Festival, Toronto – Leela, a movie that looks into people breaking away from self-denial, hitherto taboo in Indian cinema.

Leela Dehlvi(Dimple Kapadia) comes to US as a visiting professor from Bombay University. She strikes an immediate friendship with a fellow professor Chaitali (Deepti Naval). Chaitali is long divorced from Jai(Gulshan Grover) who now lives with his American wife. Leela is in a distressing ‘open marriage’ with the renowned Ghazal singer/poet Nashaad(Vinod Khanna). She over the years has accepted his amorous and philandering ways and lives with him as his muse.

Chaitali’s son 18-year-old Krishna(Amol Mhatre) is Leela’s student in the Asian Studies class. With an overbearing mother and a couldn’t care less father, he finds himself attracted to Leela. On learning of his mother’s liaisons with her white boyfriend, he leaves home angered at her double standards.

Leela and Krishna develop a strong bond. She helps him accept Chaitali’s boyfriend and he brings her to assess her relation with Nashaad.

A well-crafted story by Kavita Munjal and director Somnath Sen, it is told in an understated and unconventional manner.

No one could have played Leela Dehlvi the way Dimple did it. (My friend said imagine Rekha doing Leela. The mere thought had me in cold shudders). After a somewhat similar but rather half baked Tara Jaiswal in Dil Chahta Hai, her Leela Dehlvi is a complete character, and she enacts it with a striking helplessness. Steven Smith’s camera captures her beautifully.

Deepti Naval makes you sit up and take notice. Amol Mhatre makes an effortless super confident debut. Vinod Khanna gives an unblemished performance and it is difficult to nitpick with even Gulshan Grover.

Melodious music by Jagjit Singh and Shantanu Moitra is a mix of Gulzar's ghazals, and traditional Punjabi wedding songs, and Gujrati garba numbers.

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Some moments stay with you for long

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Krishna after making a terribly clumsy pass at Leela is embarrassed to the extent of avoiding her and her class altogether. She reassures him saying, “Our culture condemns the sin, not the sinner, come back to my class.”

Dimple Kapadia narrates an episode of two Buddhist monks who are not supposed to touch women. One of them carries a sick girl on his shoulders. The other goes and complains to the master. The master asks, “Is he carrying her now? No? Then why are you carrying her?”

Another poignant moment of the movie when Krishna has left Chaitali’s home, she breaks down before Jai saying that “The second man of my life is leaving me.” To which Jai replies, “Then make yourself such that your men don’t leave you.” That makes Chaitali realize that her love was more stifling than anything else.

I loved Gulshan’s proud leery smile on discovering his son slept with his professor, it disappears soon after Chaitali gives him a nasty glare.

Chaitali discovering condoms in her son’s closet. And Jai’s American wife getting horrified at Chaitali invading her son’s privacy,

Nashaad telling Krishna as a matter of factly, “You slept with my wife, but she is mine as she needs me and only me.”

The movie raises many questions

Companionship is a psycho-social need, and sex a biological.

Marriage as an institution provides both.

Should people in situations like of Leela, Naashad, Chaitali, Jai stuck in a marriage that doesn’t take care of these needs continue living in it? Remain deprived, incomplete?

Is it wrong for them to seek co-habitation with someone other than the legal spouse?

Rules of so called moral conduct, are they cast in steel?