The opening of Bobby Beauty Parlour is a charm offensive. The 19-minute short is dedicated to the loving memory of Cheese, one half of the talented acting duo Mac and Cheese, a pair of pretty-finned Siamese fighting fish that appear in the film (Cheese, presumably, died during or after the shoot). The voiceover that greets us immediately after is styled like an All India Radio weather broadcast, in prim, sonorous Hindi. "Aaj ka mausam kuch iss prakaar hai..." If the cuteness meter wasn't already into the red, the colours on screen are in a gentle and lovable scheme: yellow, magenta, pink. This is a film that wants the audience in its corner, and wants it quick. It lulls you before you’ve met the primary characters or reached the titular setting.
This extra coating of sugar is perhaps a necessity, given the tangle of emotions underneath. Manu (Parul Rana) is sixteen and apprenticed at a hairdresser's salon in Noida. Her best friend, Eelu (Adrija Sinha), is going away to engineering college in Pune. It's her last day in town, and they should ideally spend it together. But a heatwave is up and Manu is sulkily busy at work — a very teenage way of channelling grave displeasure, and one that the film does not underline. At any rate, Eelu drops by, leaving her irate boyfriend, chain-smoker Arun (Saksham Raj), cooling his heels.
Manu and Eelu are roughly the same size, follow similar fashion codes, likely hail from similar families and strata, and speak Hinglish with the same rough bounce typical of teenagers in the National Capital Region. What is interesting, therefore, is how writer-director Shashwat Dwivedi, building out a story by Janhavi Asthana (also the cinematographer and co-producer), finds avenues to contrast the two personalities. Peas in a pod, you say? Look closer, at any friendship.
When the salon's owner, the fearsome Bobby Aunty (Preeti Kochar), faints from heatstroke, the girls hunker down in the shop. Eelu is not only the brighter kid but also the more adventurous, fishing out a bottle of moonshine secreted in the shop and taking the first sip. Manu is combustible but also faint of heart (in a funny scene, she carries a hair straightener as a defensive stick). It's no secret — not to the audience and certainly not to the girls themselves — that Manu's prospects in life are currently limited. She describes herself as a 'drop-out' personality, making flattering comparisons to billionaires and tech founders. Yet she, even more than Eelu, can anticipate what the future holds, and she does not like it.
Two scenes spell out the dynamic plainly. Happily tipsy and fed, the girls press their faces against an aquarium. "Don't the fish get bored, doing the same thing in the same place, their lives stalled?" Manu sighs. "You would know," Eelu returns. This is followed up, around the halfway mark, by an expository 'fight', a scene so inevitable in a film of this sort it shouldn't count as a spoiler. I get Dwivedi's decision to bring things to a crescendo, unpacking a lifetime of insecurities, misunderstandings and microaggressions in a matter of minutes. But I can't help imagining what a richer film this would have been without it.
The best scene, for my money, comes a little before the end, and almost in passing. The girls get simultaneous phone calls, and realise, with a dawning finality and quickness of movement, that their parting is near. They arrange their faces like Hilary Mantel characters. "Will you come to the station tomorrow?" Eelu enquires. Before Manu can wheeze out an excuse, the phone pings again, and the moment quickly passes. It's a scene of great delicacy and shading, wonderfully performed by both the actors. Growth is a jerk and a lurch, the film knows, not a clean passage.
Bobby Beauty Parlour is likeable, bittersweet storytelling. To not be moved by it, to some degree, is to declare oneself an asshole, like Eelu's boyfriend. Dwivedi has a promising eye and ear (the one-song soundtrack is killer, a rendition of the Punjabi folk song 'Charkha', with male and female voices). Using the most ordinary visual cues — cassette players, cut-outs, random decorative tat — production designer Priya Shree creates a perfectly Proustian snow globe. After her friend leaves, Manu returns to the hollow, uncertain now. The saddest image in the film is a pair of disposable paper plates, left uncleared on the table. I'll take that over the fish.
Bobby Beauty Parlour will be available on YouTube from August 7.