While watching Bulbbul,
I realized that Clean Slate Films,
the production house headed by
Anushka and Karnesh Sharma,
is actually carefully cultivating
a new sub-genre in Hindi cinema
- the feminist supernatural film.
After Phillauri and Pari, we have Bulbbul,
which is the story of a chudail.
These films upend traditional ideas of
what constitutes evil and what is scary.
The horror isn’t a ghost or
a witch lurking in the forest.
It’s the systemic oppression of women
and the brutality inflicted on them by men.
Women break these shackles by becoming something
other than natural. Their spirit cannot be contained.
As her name suggests, Bulbbul was
always meant to be amongst the trees.
We first see her as a little girl,
sitting on a branch in bridal finery.
The film starts in 1881
and is set in the Bengal Presidency.
Bulbbul is about to be married
to a much older man.
When she asks her aunt
why she needs to wear a toe-ring,
her aunt explains, that there's a nerve in the toe that
needs to be pressed, otherwise the girl will fly away.
Of course, it's going to take more than that
to control Bulbbul.
The film then moves 20 years ahead, when
she’s a grown woman, commanding the haveli.
Her brother-in-law Satya returns after five years
and slowly, we unravel the mystery of Bulbbul
and why men in the area are dying
with such alarming consistency.
Bulbbul is the directorial debut of Anvita Dutt,
who's also written the story.
Anvita is a well-known writer and lyricist – among other
films, she’s written the dialogue for Pari and Queen.
With Bulbbul, she reveals
her keen eye for beauty.
The film, shot by Siddharth Diwan,
is visually sumptuous.
Red, which symbolizes celebration, fertility
and anger, is the dominant color motif,
starting with the opening credits,
which play out against lush red flowers.
We see red on Bulbbul’s feet,
which have been immersed in 'alta'.
Key scenes, including the climax,
are bathed in red hues.
Even the moon turns red.
And of course, red is in the blood
that's being spilt.
The violence is in sharp contrast
to the film’s aesthetics,
which have been inspired
by the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma.
The looming haveli, the ornate saris and jewelry, the
exquisite interiors echo Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas.
Like Devdas and Paro in that film, Bulbbul and Satya are
childhood friends, who part because he is sent away.
Satya also goes to study law in London.
Through childhood to adulthood, Satya has been
Bulbbul’s confidante and creative partner.
They write a book together.
In Phillauri, Shashi, the character played by
Anushka Sharma, was also a writer –
clearly Anvita is interested in
the inner lives of creative women.
But the relationship between Satya
and Bulbbul can only wreak havoc,
because she is married to his older brother Indranil
who also has a twin, Mahendra,
both played by Rahul Bose.
Bulbbul is a film about the cruelties of men and the
compromises that society forces women to make.
But it’s set up as a spooky, grandma’s tale.
Anvita, Siddharth,
production designer Meenal Agarwal,
composer Amit Trivedi
setup the atmospherics effectively.
We get the persistent fog,
the eerie sounds of the dense forest,
the horse carriages in which
no one can feel safe.
The characters and their relationships
are also etched with care.
The most intriguing is Binodini, Mahendra’s wife,
played by the beauteous Paoli Dam.
Binodini is wily.
She’s provocative and political.
But Anvita gives her depth, showing us in one scene,
what her compulsions are.
All the women are prisoners, which is why
Binodini tells Bulbbul in hushed tones:
Badi havelion mein bade raaz hote hain.
The actors deliver assured performances.
Tripti Dimri as Bulbbul seamlessly moves from being a
vulnerable girl, to a woman who revels in her strength.
I hope though someday, 
we can move away from the cliché
that a woman with spine will
necessarily drink and smoke.
It’s nice to see Tripti reunited with
her Laila Majnu co-star Avinash Tiwary.
Avinash’s role is the most standard one here,
but he infuses it with sincerity.
Parambrata Chattopadhyay is reliably good
as the local doctor
and Rahul delivers strong performances
as the twins –
one who has a glimmer of a conscience
and the other who doesn’t.
Bulbbul has enough to admire,
but ultimately Anvita trips on her own writing.
The care with which the characters and the setting
has been detailed doesn’t extend to the plot.
The narrative begins with the promise of layers,
which we see in a character like Binodini,
but it slowly flattens out
and becomes one-note.
Especially some of the male characters,
who are there only to be murdered.
The messaging overpowers the storytelling,
which deflates the grip of the film.
And inevitably in the climax, Bulbbul falls into 
that silly space that supernatural films often do.
The action doesn’t adhere to
the internal logic of the film -
can a chudail really get hurt by a bullet?
The special effects are efficiently done, but when you
start asking these questions, the spell is broken.
Bulbbul doesn’t coalesce into the fiery tale
you really hope it will become.
But Anvita is a director with craft and ambition
and that’s always exciting.
You can see Bulbbul on Netflix.
