Bollywood's Kiran Rao on returning to the director's chair with Laapataa Ladies
Rao's first film in a decade is a hybrid rom-com/caper flick
For Indian film fans fluent in Hindi, the title of Kiran Rao's second feature — Laapataa Ladies — has a delicious ring to it. The celebrated Indian director's second film after a gap of more than a decade, has meant great anticipation for this Bollywood love story meets caper flick with a feminist subtext.
Premiering at TIFF 2023, the film, starring a mostly newcomer cast in a story about an accidental bride swap during a train journey to a small village in central India, is now playing in theatres worldwide, including 22 venues across Canada.
There's a musicality to the Urdu word laapataa, which loosely translates to 'lost' or 'misplaced.' Pairing it with "Ladies" evokes a delightful sense of surprise. In India, "ladies" — like other incongruent English words — can mean everything and nothing. A ladies compartment or ladies seat, for example, can be a forbidden space, an inconvenience, or a foreign idea — depending on the temperament of the man encountering it.
Who are these Lost Ladies, you immediately want to know. Why are they lost?
The trailer suggests a rollicking rom-com about a bride switch. Two couples sit next to each other during a train ride in the heartland of northern India. In the hullabaloo of getting off at a small station in the middle of the night, one of the grooms Deepak Kumar (Sparsh Shrivastava) accidentally takes the wrong bride Jaya (Pratibha Ranta) home, since both brides have their faces covered with identical looking traditional long red veils.
When Deepak and his family realize the mistake, a case of finding the missing bride Phool (Nitanshi Goel) and returning Jaya to her marital home unfolds. Except, there's something fishy about Jaya. She's not as naive as she proclaims. An element of caper starts to creep in. Meanwhile, Phool bides her time at a train station, helping out at a tea stall, trying to remember the name of Deepak's village. While hopeful that Deepak will come find her soon, Phool also learns from some life lessons with a side of tough love.
We caught up with Rao at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival where she told us that she was feeling lost herself. Although she'd produced a range of films including Dangal, Secret Superstar and Lal Singh Chadha (all starring Khan), she wasn't about the ideas she was penning herself.
"I'd had a baby, and for most women it's challenging when you're trying to balance home and work," she says. "My writing did take a little bit of a backseat for a couple of years. But even after that, I was lost in a sense that I was looking for my voice, a little bit. I was looking for what I wanted to say next. And being lost leads you to unexpected new places. Offers you the opportunity to find something new."
Rao's debut feature Dhobi Ghat/Mumbai Diaries, which starred her then husband and Bollywood star Aamir Khan, was a gentle and thoughtful love letter to Mumbai, the city of Rao's residence and a place that has come to be associated with the dream factory that is the Hindi film industry. After writing and directing that intensely personal indie, Rao wanted to make a film that had broader appeal and could "move the needle a little bit," she adds.
As it happens, Khan, from whom Rao is now divorced, came across a story called 2 Brides by Biplab Goswami at a scriptwriting competition organized by Indian boutique film studio Cinestaan. When Khan narrated a one line summary of the film about two young brides getting switched on a train, Rao was hooked.
Working with screenplay writer Sneha Desai, Rao decided to keep the tone very light while making a film that tackles weighty subjects such as the ghoonghat (veil), dowry, violence against women and patriarchy in general. The social commentary is embedded in the plot and characters, rather than exposition — which also suits the beats of this rom-com-caper film.
As for creating the fictitious world of Nirmal Pradesh (no such place exists in India), Desai stuck to the theme of simple people having simple problems, which require simple solutions.
"They take small leaps of faith. The characters don't have any huge ambitions, the speed breakers they face are small," says Desai. "It's the same for problems that even we [as audience members] face. They seem mammoth. But small changes can help overcome them."
There's lots to love to about the film – from the actors who come either from the theatre or television world, and were scouted to fit a very particular universe of the village full of oddball characters, down to the names of the villages such as Murti, Pateela or Surajmukhi.
In fact, the name of Deepak's village Surajmukhi, which means sunflower in Hindi, carries an unscripted message. A running gag in the film involves Phool trying to remember the village she's married into.
"People name flowers like Gulaab or Mogra or Parijaat. These are all fragrant flowers. A sunflower may not be fragrant, but it's useful. Similarly young women are often seen as fragrant or objects of beauty. But they are also skillful," says Desai.
At the end of day, the film is about being lost and finding yourself, says Rao. It's about sisterhood; ideas we need to remember during a time when issues ranging from climate change and mental health to the political landscape can feel overwhelming.
"We really need to reinforce the power of love and friendship," she says.
After seeing the film back in September, Laapataa Ladies became a metaphor of sorts for my TIFF partner-in-crime and podcast co-host Baisakhi Roy. A colleague had dubbed Baisakhi and me as the laapataa ladies of the festival. Both of us were lost in the world of films for the duration of the annual event, giving our homes, partners and children secondary thought.
I kept on thinking about some of the observations made by the women of Laapataa Ladies. At one time, a mother-in-law remarks how she had forgotten what food brings her pleasure, after years of cooking for others in the family. But a simple exchange reminds her of her own desires. That's the larger message I will take from the film — getting lost can also mean finding yourself, for the first time or once again.
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