LIPSTICK UNDER MY BURKHA
The burkha of conservatism lifted, Lipstick... emerges in all its vivid, glossy colour
The certification for the film is a victory for progressive cinema
THE STORY IS LADY ORIENTED, their fantasy above life.” When the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) made this observation about Lipstick Under My Burkha on January 25 this year, denying it certification in the process, writer-director Alankrita Shrivastava knew she had a battle on her hands. In February, at a screening for the revising committee in Mumbai, CBFC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani said that it was not one scene or dialogue, but that the “whole film was a problem”. “It’s a very strange thing that a government body, in the year 2017, can say ‘we’re not going to certify your film because it is from the female point of view’,” says Shrivastava. “It was a wake-up call for me. It was not just about my film. You can’t set this kind of precedent.”
Two months later, the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) came to Shrivastava’s rescue, issuing a decree criticising CBFC for its “misdirected” assessment, adding that it had failed to “judge the film in its entirety from the point of view of its overall impact since it sends a message of [female] empowerment and emancipation”. The FCAT ruling also stated that “there cannot be any embargo on a film being woman-oriented or containing sexual fantasies and expression of the inner desires of women”. Asking for the sex scenes to be shortened and one word to be muted, the FCAT ordered the CBFC to issue a certification, which arrived on June 3.
The film releases on July 21, almost six months after it was denied certification. Seated in the office
of Balaji Telefilms, managed by one of the most powerful women in Indian entertainment, Ekta Kapoor, Shrivastava is in a jovial mood. Kapoor’s ALTBalaji, the edgier, more independent arm of the company, stepped in to release the film after Kapoor hailed it as a “credible and entertaining” film that “stimulates the mind” and has both “spunk and humour”.
The film’s “sexual scenes, abusive words [and] audio pornography” may have been the CBFC’s official reason to deny the film certification, but some say that it was Shrivastava’s showing of what women want, rather than what men think women want, that caused the furore. Bollywood traditionally makes films in which women are subservient to men—a film that challenges the status quo and does so brazenly can be problematic. Lipstick Under My Burkha follows four ordinary women in Bhopal who “are trying to seek freedom from the claustrophobia of their lives in quirky ways”. These four women are Usha, a fifty-something widow (Ratna Pathak Shah) looking for romance again; Leela (Aahana Kumra), a beautician struggling to balance her mother’s expectations and her own desires; Rehana (newcomer Plabita Borthakur), a teenager who aspires to be a musician; and Shirin (Konkana Sensharma) a mother of three trying to find space for herself within her marriage. “If a woman has agency, it is always problematic. It scares people,” says Shrivastava. “That a story about the dreams and desires of women can become such a threat to the patriarchal order... the film becomes something else.”
Shrivastava grew up shuttling between Bihar, where her father was an IAS officer, and Dehradun, where she studied at Welham Girls’ School. She then moved to Delhi to study at Lady Shri Ram College and Jamia Millia Islamia University. After graduating, she moved to Mumbai, where at first, she served as an assistant to Prakash Jha, before becoming associate director on Raajneeti. She made her directorial debut with Turning 30!!! and thereafter made a documentary on the cultural history of Bihar.
Surprisingly for a film that has travelled the globe and won 11 international festival awards, Shrivastava says she wrote Lipstick... on a lark. In 201112, she says, she was more invested in developing a legal drama with a female protagonist. But after struggling to “get a grip on the subtext and layers” of the project, she submitted a draft of Lipstick... to the NFDC Screenwriters Lab in 2012. Shot in 2014 and finished in 2015, the film premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2016. Shrivastava never thought she was writing a provocative film, one that would stir heated debate on primetime news. Now, she says that the arduous battle with the CBFC is symbolic of the film’s core narrative: how stifled women feel when they want to express themselves.
Shrivastava’s film is being celebrated for its female gaze and feminist perspective, but it does have its share of male characters, albeit seen from the women’s point of view. They include Vaibbhav Tatwawdi (Bajirao Mastani) as Leela’s prospective groom and Vikrant Massey (A Death in the Gunj) as the photographer boyfriend; newcomer Jagat Singh Solanki as Pathak Shah’s love interest and Shashank Arora (Titli) as Rehana’s friend. “In mainstream cinema, the prevalent gaze is the male gaze,” says Shrivastava. “The very fact that we have so many items songs .... We look at a woman as an object of desire, from a male point of view. Stalking [becomes] equal to love. I feel what we consume is very regressive. We rarely see women from their own point of view, without judgement.”
After the film’s release across India, Shrivastava will travel to Australia for yet another festival screening. In August, she is looking at screening it for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the body that hands out the Golden Globes. “It has been my life for so long,” said Shrivastava when asked about letting go. “I am the film and the film is me.” With Lipstick Under My Burkha, she sure has left her mark.
“If a woman has agency, it is always problematic,” says Shrivastava. “That a story about the dreams and desires of women can become a threat to the patriarchal order...”