'Kuch Sapney Apne' Movie Review: Sincerity of Queer-Themed Drama Undone by Weak Craft

Directors: Shridhar Rangayan, Saagar Gupta
Writers: Shridhar Rangayan, Saagar Gupta
Cast: Satvik Bhatia, Arpit Chaudhary, Mona Ambegaonkar, Shishir Sharma, Yamini Singh, Abhay Kulkarni, Veenah Nair

Some movies break your heart when they’re not good. A chunk of filmmaker-activist Sridhar Rangayan’s filmography — which focuses on queer subjects and LGBTQ-themed stories — falls into this category.

The chasm between intent and execution is as wide as the chasm between fact and fiction in Hindi historical biopics. Distinguishing between the two is important; criticising the craft of a film is not the same as panning its cause. If social significance alone were a yardstick for meaningful cinema, Rangayan’s latest (co-directed and co-written with Saagar Gupta), Kuch Sapney Apne, would be the Love Actually of the genre.

A still from the film.

A sequel to his previous feature, Evening Shadows (2018), Kuch Sapney Apne expands its multi-narrative snapshot of an orthodox South Indian family at the crossroads. The conflict is now married to its consequences.

The film takes off years after young Kartik (now played by Satvik Bhatia) comes out to his conservative mother, Vasudha (Mona Ambegaonkar). It opens with Kartik doing a photography workshop in Sweden; he’s also in a long-term live-in relationship with his partner, Aman (Arpit Chaudhary), back in Mumbai. Vasudha dotes on them; she has also taken up painting in their hometown Srirangapatna, but her scowling husband Damodar (now played by Shishir Sharma) remains as grumpy and regressive as ever.

The other characters continue their journeys. Damodar’s divorced sister, Sarita (Yamini Singh), is on the brink of remarriage, while his brother Ramesh (Abhay Kulkarni) finally takes the plunge and leaves his wife and kids to live as a trans woman on the streets. In other words, this family is an all-in-one surrogate for society. All the possible commentary and situations are packed into the confines of a single household.

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The thing about this checklist is that, on paper, the arcs are astutely observed. The complications feel lived-in. For instance, Kartik and Aman aren’t a happily-ever-after couple by virtue of being gay. They go through a crisis of trust early on — Kartik has a fling in Sweden — and break up for a bit. His mother even advises him to patch up and not throw it away.

You can tell that the pressure of being in a same-sex relationship — of being an against-all-odds story in a world rigged against them — is so crushing that it takes a toll on the young couple; it's the seven-year ditch masquerading as the seven-year itch.

The homophobic Damodar is not staged as an all-out villain, but more like a common bigot who uses religion as a crutch. When he meets his sister’s middle-aged suitor, he casually asks the man how he manages to live in Dubai, in a "Muslim country". The man doesn’t school him either; he replies that "not everyone is Muslim in Dubai; there are many Indians". It may not be rewarding to watch, but it’s practical.

A still from the film.

There are some sensitive moments, too. At one point, Sarita, who is ecstatic to be getting remarried, tearfully apologises to her sister-in-law Lata — a character still coming to terms with the fact that her husband was a repressed trans woman all along — for being happy during Lata’s darkest time.

At another point, Vasudha ends up moving in temporarily with her son Kartik and Aman after Damodar crosses the line in rage. This arrangement is played for cross-generational laughs, of course, but the idea is perceptive. Most modern shows or films might have used new-age wokeness and morality to combat Damodar’s ways and punish him in a black-or-white manner. But here you see the unreasonable man lost without his wife — a familiar sight for anyone who’s grown up in an openly dysfunctional family — and being cared for by his sister-in-law instead.

For better or worse, the old couple miss each other out of habit; they know no other life. Damodar’s redemption, too, is realistic; everyone is aware that he cannot change overnight ("I cannot join you in pride marches"), so he asks for time. The resolution has a vintage Rajkumar Hirani feel-goodness; the others unite to help and humble the man who othered them. A special mention for Marathi actor Abhay Kulkarni’s committed performance as a person confronting the stigma of coming out as a trans woman. The writing is far from nuanced, but he does the job.

A still from the film.

If only films were made on paper, though.

All the courage and personality of Kuch Sapney Apne is undone by fundamental film-making flaws. The dubbing is off; the dialogue and characterisations are flimsy (not to mention the cringey Swedish chap who throws himself on Kartik every other scene); the green-screen glitches (for instance, the fake background to a scooter in motion) are blatant; there’s no sense of transition or continuity between scenes (a serious scene of Damodar screaming in the house cuts to a musical interlude featuring the two young men and Vasudha having a fun picnic); the "does gay mean happy?" pun is overcooked; Kartik’s photography skills are superficial; Vasudha’s single-woman portions are full of cliches (she goes "aaiyo!" when the time to paint a nude portrait arrives).

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This isn’t to say none of it happens; it’s just that the representation is simplistic and the design is unsound. In short, the craft lacks more than a finishing touch. Kuch Sapney Apne embraces the euphemism of being an ‘important film’ rather than a solid one.

Big-budget Bollywood spectacles get away with far more; the scale becomes a smokescreen, and it convinces viewers that disliking the film is disliking what they stand for. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere to escape for the smaller ones. All it has are words and desires.