Tollywood: The Sheets Are Always White

Tollywood is going bold, but are the films the better for it? Or is it just....

- Dola Mitra

Last October, 40 minutes into the screening of Bengali crime thriller Bheetu at Delhi’s Muktadhara auditorium, the secretary of the Bengali Association sprung up from his seat in a huff, stormed into the projection room and ordered that the screening be stopped. The Calcutta-based director, Utsav Mukherjee, says the gentleman was aggrieved at the “explicit sexual content” of the film, saying it violated what he called “the bhalo Bangla culture (good Bengali culture)”. Utsav says he “was shocked because the film had a very successful run in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal and there were absolutely no complaints from the audience. In fact, most women felt I had succeeded in bringing out the dark underbelly of repressed sexuality that exists in Bengali society,” he says. Bheetu deals with the theme of child abuse and has some scenes depicting what the director calls “perverse sexual behaviour”, including incest, stalking and rape. 

Bengali films have of late been entering taboo territory, shedding what one direc­tor calls “the garb of inhibition”. Mainstream movies today do not shy away from explicit lovemak­ing or kissing scenes. Some might say Charulata 2011 set off the trend of “bold” films four years ago as it ventured, somewhat audaciously, to upend the subtle sensuality of the 1964 Satyajit Ray masterpiece, Charulata. Every frame of