Punjabi Pops:
There’s one thing this film deserves credit for—who’d have imagined that one day the term ‘heteropaternal superfecundation’ would be used in a mainstream Hindi film!
Bad Newz, directed by Anand Tiwari, scripted by Ishita Moitra and Tarun Dudeja, would get points for originality—even though it just so happens that Brazilian web show Desperate Lies, on the same subject, is streaming now. The film is a spiritual sequel to Good Newz, in which IVF samples had gotten exchanged and two women ended up with the wrong foetuses. Does that mean, a pregnancy universe is on the way to being expanded? Like lobbing a live grenade in an overpopulated country!
That medical term mentioned above, describes the rare occurrence when a woman bears twins with different fathers, which is the predicament the film’s leading lady Saloni (Triptii Dimri) finds herself in. As a character rightly says, she cannot tell whether her story is a tragedy or a comedy, Which something Bad Newz grapples with too.
Saloni, an ambitious chef who dreams of winning a prestigious Meraki star, is steered off course by the persistent wooing by Akhil (Vicky Kaushal), who runs a fast food joint. Once she is married to him – and there are some steamy honeymoon scenes—she realizes that his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) will always be third wheel, and that Akhil’s idea of romance is turning up at her place of work with kitschy gifts and unbridled Punjabi enthusiasm. The marriage does not last a year, Saloni loses her job and ends up working at a hotel in Mussoorie, owned by Gurbir (Ammy Virk). He is single following a romantic heartbreak and quite taken in by his chef. It is she, who in a drunken state, aggressively seduces him, and then finds a contrite Akhil hovering in her room. So it turns out that she falls pregnant after two instances of unprotected sex and bears twins – fathered by two men, both of whom definitely want her his own kid.
For an Indian film, it is commendable that the woman is not judged at any point—it is the men who resort to desperate measures to impress Saloni, and win a test of manhood they have set for themselves. Because their unborn children are also involved, they resort to mean one-upmanship tricks to oust the rival and for this stretch the film gets funny and also makes points about male competitiveness and immaturity. In one brief bit, when the men first meet, they bump into each other, a book falls from Gurbir’s hands, both bend to pick it up—a male version of the famous Mere Mehboob scene, with romantic music and sultry glances. But that path is not explored.
The centre of this bitter-comic contest is a woman, but the story is actually about these two entitled brats growing up to understand what it means to be a man and a father. After going “mine, mine” they have to concede that the decision about the kids’ birth and future is not theirs to make.
Pity then, that Indians films cannot see motherhood – impending in this case—without eventually succumbing to melodrama, families joining the fray with all the attendant fuss and bother. Saloni is in the difficult position of having to choose between the two, nobody even goes into what the infants will be told about their paternity when they grow up.
Triptii Dimri brings a freshness to the role, and a softness to a tough character. Ammy Virk is sweetly charming, but it’s Vicky Kaushal who gets to play loud Punjabi romantic, wicked and slightly tragic– gets the full character arc from selfish mama’s boy to wise beyond his own comprehension. After tossing up a novel idea, the film may have gone haywire, but Kaushal never misses a step.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
