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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Varun Grover's short film Kiss turns cinema into a mirror for introspection
Directorial debuts are special, where you have an artist finally getting a chance to say something close and important to them as a person. That Kiss is lyricist and writer Varun Grover's first film (he made this before All India Rank) informs the viewer of the subject matter that has mattered to him at some point. (Also read: All India Rank movie review: Varun Grover makes a tender, crowd-pleasing directorial debut) The titular kiss here is between two men. At first, we only hear the sound of the sloppy lips against one another. This is unnecessary, as per the members of the censor board (Shubhrajyoti Barat and Swanand Kirkire). These two middle-aged men discuss with the young director Sam (Adarsh Gourav) about the point of keeping this scene. 'Kyu ka jawab koi artist kya dega, sir (Why will artists explain why)?' he asks. A post shared by MUBI India (@mubiindia) But there's a catch, as the three men rewatch the scene again to record how long this kiss lasts. For each one of them, the time stamp is different, ranging from 28 seconds to above 2 minutes. Why is this happening? Kiss then takes the opportunity to seek an answer to this very question, revealing how each one of them is bringing their own subjectivity into the way they observe, process, and express. Kiss is a film about censorship, which wants to interrogate the faces behind the regressive and draconian rules that curtail artistic expression. The ones which infantilise the audience with huge 'smoking kills' warnings and cutting scenes of films that are meant for adults. Kiss is also about cinema becoming a sort of medium for catharsis and introspection. We come to films with our own prejudices and opinions. The point is whether the darkness in the room allows us the space to unlearn and unpack some of those deep-seated notions of love and life. Packed within 15 minutes, Kiss pulsates with ideas and questions that might feel a little overpowering for its own sake, but the sincerity sticks. It is this sincerity and concern that makes Kiss stand out amid the disarray of the current crop of films that is being produced by the Hindi film industry at large. Take, for instance, the emergence of the hypermasculine figure in all his casual rage and unchecked violence. It is all in the service of rage, sidestepping nuance and empathy so casually. The man will kiss and the man will kill. That a short film like Kiss is about men making love is a step taken ahead, daring to ask (and yield) what might be the dichotomy after all. I have a feeling Varun Grover has more stories to tell. Kiss is available to watch on Mubi India.
Hindustan Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
I'm a big admirer of Payal Kapadia: 'Grand Tour' filmmaker Miguel Gomes
New Delhi, When Payal Kapadia won the Grand Prix award at Cannes for "All We Imagine As Light" last year, she gave a shout out to Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes, whose film "Grand Tour" was also in competition. And it seems the admiration for each other's work is mutual. The director, known for his inventive style, considers Kapadia a friend and a filmmaker whose work he really admires. Gomes' "Grand Tour", which won the Best Director award at Cannes, is currently streaming on MUBI India. Gomes has seen Kapadia's 2021 Cannes winning documentary "A Night of Knowing Nothing". "Payal is a friend of mine. I met Payal when she made her previous film . It was a major discovery for me. It resonated in a very personal way how she was building filming reality in India and at the same time, creating, like a novelist with letters. "You don't see the characters but you hear them, the love story, so it was the film that really connected with me. I met Payal in France and she said that she liked my films and it was really amazing to know her and know her work which I am a big admirer of," Gomes told PTI in a roundtable interview. In her Cannes acceptance speech for her history-making win for "All We Imagine As Light", Kapadia said, "I'm a huge fan of Miguel Gomes. I follow what he does." Gomes, who is known for his experimental approach to filmmaking that blends different cinematic formats to create visually stunning stories, begins his new film "Grand Tour" in 1917 Rangoon where a British civil servant, Edward, abandons his fiancee, Molly, who arrives from London to get married after their long engagement. As Edward travels to Singapore, then to Bangkok, Manila, Saigon, Osaka, Shanghai and Tibet, a determined Molly follows him. The whimsical film, where Gomes has shot the period details in black and white and used documentary footage in colour, was one of the best reviewed movies at the Cannes Film Festival. Gomes shot the film during the pandemic and said they had no idea what was going to happen when they started preparing for the journey across Asia. "We started in Myanmar. It was made chronologically from west to east and then in the first week of February we were in Japan and we tried to get to China and the Chinese producer told us, 'I think it's a bad idea'," the filmmaker said. According to Gomes, they were initially more concerned about the shoot being postponed in Manila due to a volcano eruption there in January 2020, but soon realised that the situation was getting out of hand for other countries as well. "Maybe because we were supposed to shoot in the Philippines and then in China, we didn't take the messages seriously that were coming from China. We thought it would be okay and then it was Covid." Gomes said he wanted to shoot what was happening in China and even spoke to his crew about possible risks. "I remember, I have a very nice sound man that, in fact, is a little bit crazy... I would like to go, I would like to take a risk, so what do you think about that? And nobody answered me except for the sound man, who thought for five minutes and said, 'Miguel, I think I can go because I'm getting old and I didn't pay well enough to the social security. So I will be retired and I will be in misery. So if I die, it will be okay'." In the end, Gomes had to shoot the China scenes for "Grand Tour" remotely as they couldn't travel to the country due to Covid restrictions. Known internationally for movies such as "Tabu", "Redemption" and three-part "Arabian Nights", Gomes said he has never been the one to meticulously plan everything in his movies. "I try to create the conditions for not being able to control, to just enter the process that will give me something and I can surf it, like it was a wave and I was a surfer. Sometimes it doesn't go well, there are days that are not so good and there are days that are great. And in the end you have the film," he added. And true to his style, Gomes would not define the characters or the story of "Grand Tour", leaving it to critics and cinephiles to figure out whether it is about colonialism, a dying empire, or a gumptious woman. "I made the film because I think it's open to many interpretations and what I like in the reactions to the movie is that I sometimes hear very different ideas that people got from the film about Edward, Molly and colonialism. Sometimes people see it in almost opposite ways. I cannot steal that from the viewers, saying, 'No, Molly is this'. To be honest, I don't have any idea." Gomes is next working on "Savagery", which he described as a strange war film. He has been developing the story for years. The film is inspired by "Os Sertões" . Written by Euclides da Cunha in 1902, the Brazilian literary classic narrates the true story of a war that happened at the end of the 19th century in Canudos, a settlement of Bahia's Sertao. "It's a film about a place, the people that live in that place and the war that existed in this part of Brazil...I had this film planned long ago. I started working on this film in 2016 and it was supposed to be my film after 'Arabian Nights' which I made in 2015 and then it was so difficult to get it financed. It's not an adaptation of a novel, so it doesn't have main characters."
