Somewhere inside Khandaani Shafakhana is a
sparkling film about a small-town girl who
inherits her uncle’s sex clinic.
After her father’s death, Baby Bedi is struggling
to support her family.
She’s spirited and hard-working but besieged
by mercenary relatives, an affectionate but
lazy brother and a dead-end job.
And then, out of the blue, her estranged uncle,
a Unani hakim, bequeaths her his sex clinic.
The clinic is located on prime real estate.
Selling it would solve Baby’s problems.
However, the will dictates that she needs
to run it first for six months.
We’re in Hoshiarpur, Punjab where people
can’t even bring themselves to say the word 'sex'.
So how does a young, single woman make this
prickly situation work?
It’s a lovely idea but debutante director
Shilpi Dasgupta and writer Gautam Mehra
make a hash of it.
The template for tackling taboo subjects with
humor has been set by Vicky Donor and
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan.
You combine naturalistic textures with solid
performances and crackling writing.
Khandaani Shafakhana gets only the first one
right. The film has an authentic ambience.
DOP Rishi Punjabi ably captures the narrow
bazaar lanes covered with these thick electricity wires
and beautiful latticework windows and
the sprawling fields of Punjab.
Stray moments are genuinely funny
– like a roadside hakim who, while concocting a dubious-looking
jadi booti mixture, declares that it will
turn ‘kamzor chewing gum into Singham.’
Or the character of Gabru Ghatak, a homegrown rockstar.
Badshah, making his acting debut, injects
a dose of much-needed energy into the film.
Gabru lives in flashy metallic jackets and
says lines like: 'Everything is image' or
'I respect jazba'.
That’s a keeper.
But the rest of Khandaani Shafakhana is a slog.
The film takes forever to get started.
We spend too much time getting to know Baby’s
tough circumstances.
And the tonality is all over the place.
The film wants to be funny but the writing
is too weak and the feeble jokes are underlined
with loud background music, cueing us to laugh.
The film also wants to deliver a serious message
about the importance of being open about sex
– so entire scenes play out like public
service announcements, in which characters
espouse the cause.
There’s also very little logic – I don’t
know much about Unani medicine but surely
it’s a fairly complex science.
Baby figures it out in a few months. Before
you knew it, she can identify diseases simply
by looking into people’s eyes.
We also see her in a lab coat mixing medicines.
Khandaani Shafakhana puts too much pressure
on Sonakshi Sinha.
She's in almost every frame of the film.
We see her in close-up – literally and figuratively.
But her performance is largely confined to
pouting and scowling.
The moments of heartfelt emotion, mostly in
the scenes between her and her mother, are
few and far between.
It’s a pleasure to see the wonderful Nadira
Babbar back on screen but again, there isn’t
enough meat in the role.
Varun Sharma repeats his trademark act of
bumbling, foolish sidekick.
Annu Kapoor as the English-spouting lawyer
seems to be having some fun.
As does Rajesh Sharma as the judge who presides
over the climactic courtroom showdown.
This is when the film really comes alive but
it’s too late.
Shilpi Dasgupta is a graduate of the Film
and Television Institute.
Her student project Mangali - An Exorcism
received a special mention at the National Film Awards.
How does a CV like that lead to a tepid film like this?
But I' m hoping better things will come!
