Of strong women & stormy relationships

Actor Renuka Sahane’s directorial, ‘Tribangha’, shows how one’s attempt to live up to the choices made impact life

Renuka Sahane makes her debut as a director and presents a short take on women in some strong colours. She chooses for the main characters strong women, women of substance. She scripts a narrative without too many diversions and distractions. She sticks to a plain clear narrative. Even takes the predictable route to build her characters and yet offers a whiff of fresh air.

At a time when women empowerment is politically right, she talks about how it is not so much about the freedom of making our choices as it is about living up to the choices we make that will impact our lives. It also gives us a peep into the fact that successful people do not necessarily lead happy lives. In fact, they bear the burden of the cross with hurt, anguish, anger and intellectual credibility since they are thinking persons who make their mistakes, diagnose them, and live to regret them.

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Three generations of women, a single family: Writer and Sahitya Academy Award winner Nayanthara Apte (Tanvi Azmi) is at the sunset of her life. In her quest for writing, the mainstay of her life, she has left behind a husband Vinayak (Piyush Ranade) and her small children, since she cannot get along with her nagging ma-in-law Aaji (Rajani Velankar).

She moves on and then claims her children who grow up under her care. However, her daughter Anuradha (Kajol) has a mind of her own and cannot pardon her mother. She has been a victim of child abuse by her stepfather Vikramaditya (Nishank Varma).

Anuradha cannot complete a sentence without the four-letter cuss word. Now a famous actor and Odissi dancer, she owes her passion for dance to Bhaksar Raina (Kanlwaljit), another man in her mother’s life. She and her brother Robindro (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi) are strongly attached to each other.

Anuradha does not believe in the institution of marriage and has a daughter Masha (Mithila Palkar) whose social stance on women’s happiness, etc., is diametrically opposite to that of her mother and grandmother. Things come to the brim when Nayanthara slips into coma and is rushed to the hospital by Milan Upadhaya (Kunal Roy Kapoor).

Distanced by time and hurt from her mother, she rushes to the hospital with her dance dress on and from there, the story is a narrative into the past and how the decisions the three make dictate their life and the hollow of their emotional instability. All strong women who somehow believe they have made the best choices but have huge baggage.

The film produced by Ajay Devgn is worth watching. Kajol is, of course, at the centre of the narrative. She shrieks and shouts very often. However, she matches it with some wonderful cinematic moments. Tanvi is subdued and ensures that her contrast tells. She is, in fact, the best in the film. Studied and mellowed.

Playing her part in the younger age is Shweta Mehendale who fails to convert the fire in the belly required for the ambitious lady. Mithila Palkar, too, is promising. Another noteworthy performance in a film where the performances add credibility to the narrative is Kunal Roy Kapoor.

Some moments are a cringe like the scene in the school where the teacher is insensitive to the divorce of Anuradha’s mother. Stereotypes make things a tad easy for the filmmaker. It is a laboured attempt to tell us all that the life we are living is not easy.

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