Pushing boundaries
Indian actress Kalki Koechlin hoping her new film will help to change the conversation back home about people with disabilities and sexuality,
Kalki Koechlin, a member of India’s new wave of actors and filmmakers who defy Bollywood conventions, stars as an independent and sexually curious student and writer with cerebral palsy in Margarita With a
Straw.
The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, screens for a final time Friday. Last at TIFF 2010 for That Girl
With Yellow Boots (which she co-wrote) and included in the Star’s roundup of young actors to watch for, Koechlin’s portrayal of the bisexual Laila who finds love with outspoken activist Khanum (Sayani Gupta) while studying in New York is sure to be controversial at home, where films usually reflect the conservative society.
Written and directed by Shonali Bose ( Amu), the story is inspired by Bose’s cousin, Malini, who has cerebral palsy.
Koechlin, 30, who was born to French parents living in Pondicherry, speaks French, English, Tamil and Hindi. She sat down with the Star the morning after the premiere of Margarita With A Straw.
How do you define this film?
It’s hard to say. I feel it’s a film in India that’s definitely pushing boundaries. Nobody has made a film on disability and sexuality in India. This has never happened, no. It’s really something. And not to mention the bisexual angle as well. It’s new. You hope that it’ll speak to people because what I loved about the script was that after a while you forget about the disability and you look at the person and that’s the point of the film.
This is considered a taboo subject at home. Are you nervous?
It is. Am I nervous? Yeah I suppose I am but I am sort of expecting that. I’m not worried about those reactions because we have those reactions for like every film. Yellow Boots had extreme reactions and another film I did had extreme reactions. You brace yourself to that.
But yesterday during the screening I was nervous about this; about 70 per cent of the audience was Indian, I was thinking how are they going to react? Are people are going to walk out of the screening? And people didn’t walk out. It was packed and they stayed until the end so I was just impressed that that happened.
This is a very challenging physical role, replicating the posture and speech of someone with cerebral palsy. How did you prepare?
I was very scared to get it right. You are representing something and you don’t want to get it wrong, so it was very important for me to do a lot of work. I said I wouldn’t do this film unless I had over six months free doing nothing else.
One of the most important things was an introduction from Shonali to her cousin Malini, who has cerebral palsy.
Malini just welcomed me with open arms. I followed her around everywhere, I lived with her, we went out drinking together, we watched movies together, we did everything together. I really got to see the world of somebody with CP in real detail. And that’s a privilege, a person’s private space.
How did you create Laila’s voice?
Malini introduced me to her speech therapist and physiotherapist who really made me understand how the muscles work. The position that you’re in makes you quite collapsed, your lungs are also a bit collapsed, and the muscles are weaker. So they can take in less air, you have shallow breathing. The tongue is also a muscle so the tongue is restricted from its movement.
Laila knows what she wants, doesn’t she? She refuses to be treated any differently than anyone else.
She totally fights back and that’s what Malini’s attitude is like. She puts big old bullies to shame. She just goes for it and makes a joke about everything all the time.
There’s a fine line between doing a genuine portrayal of a person with physical challenges and parody.
Were you concerned?
Absolutely. Firstly, cerebral palsy is so different from one person to the next. So where do you draw the line, what do you pick and choose? So it was really forming the character organically at the same time as well as the physicality, the personality and the physicality came together.