The-robbery-has-to-be-neat

She enters the frame delicately swaying to Clara Thomas’ B-A-B-Y, and complains about how every song in the world references “baby”. Indeed, this becomes a metaphor for their love story as well.)The chase scenes — which are never dizzying in their pace — are balanced with Baby’s blooming romance with Debora (an endearing Lily James), who shares his dream of driving out West while listening to music.

The first car-chase sequence of the film is so exquisitely choreographed; every bend in the road, every bump is in step with the music. In one of the early scenes in the film, his accomplices engage in a banter and delay their heist by a few seconds, prompting Baby to rewind the song (Neat Neat Neat by The Damned). Now his excuse for his perpetual proclivity for music is to suppress the ringing in his ears. She has no agency; the wheels spin only around Baby.

“You so looney, you got your own tunes,” jokes Bats.Rating: Cast: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza GonzalesDirector: Edgar WrightThe protagonist of Edgar Wright’s eponymously titled action-musical Baby Driver is not a character who is driven by music. Baby’s China Aluminum Casement Door taciturn and withdrawn nature leaves him paranoid and suspicious; the fuss about Baby’s several iPods makes no sense to him. She has only two in her name. Instead, he carefully curates songs on several of his iPods and, in a way, dances to their tune.

After the death of his parents, he gets involved in a theft that goes awry, and leaves him in Doc’s (a no-nonsense and witty Spacey) debt. He secretly records snippets of conversations and remixes them with his own music, creating a situational rhythm that he would perhaps later have an opportunity to sway to. It is both an audio and a visual delight. What it also does is that it helps him muffle the humdrum existence of those around him.The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society. To pay it off, Baby must serve as a getaway driver for all the heists that Doc — notorious for not working with the same crew twice — plans. He stops in front of a shop with saxophones painted on its window just when saxophones are introduced in the song. Such is Doc’s faith in Baby’s ability to get out of sticky situations, and indeed, he is hardly proven wrong. To drown out the noise of their daily arguments, Baby would sleep with his earphones in. He wears his sunglasses even indoors, and remains unfazed when Jamie Foxx’s character snatches two pairs off of his face only to discover a third one in store. After he is involved in a car crash, which kills his parents, Baby is left with tinnitus for life. Baby, although always on the road, inhabits a limited space: his destination is always decided beforehand, along with the time of arrival and departure.

The scene, which follows, a tracking shot wherein Baby walks down the street to get coffee makes use of lyrics written on signboards and windows. Baby is cool, and he knows it. Jon Hamm menacingly plays Buddy, a former Wall Street employee who ran away to get drugs, and is married to Darling (Gonzales), who was his favourite stripper.

The robbery has to be neat, in sync with the beat.Doc brings three characters to work with him. Debora provides him with the fantasy of hitting the road that leads nowhere. Jamie Foxx’s Bats is a batshit crazy guy, who is always volatile and unhinged, and takes pride in announcing that he is the only person with mental issues. (The film is generously peppered with more of such one-liners.As the backstory reveals, Baby’s parents had a troubled marriage

What-Lipstick-director-Alankrita-Srivastava

It becomes apparent from the trailer that none of the three women have been slotted into the roles that are usually reserved for older women in Bollywood movies — those of  the mother, or mother-in-law, usually one-dimensional, and without much scope for growth. “Older women have, until now, been portrayed as gentle, naïve, and motherly. I hope the movie does well, because such stories provide an incentive for others to create similar stories that go beyond typical tropes,” she adds.A still from the Lipstick Under My BurkhaSupriya Pathak, whose role in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram Leela won her an award for best actor in a negative role, also welcomes this trend.Though the trend is definitely an encouraging one, there aren’t nearly enough movies in this category to celebrate just yet, according to Vagina Monologues producer Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal. While the trend of expanding roles and looking beyond traditional tropes is something that veteran actresses in the industry have welcomed, they also feel that more films of this nature are long overdue.

“The audiences for theatre are also such that they are more open to experiments,” says Mahabanoo, while Lilette states, “You have infinite freedom in theatre that films have yet to tap into. Before my altercations with the CBFC, I thought of Lipstick as just a movie about four women and their own sets of hopes and dreams.Movies still have a lot of catching up to do, as theatre veterans Lilette and Mahabanoo both state PVC Casement Window Factory that the medium provides far more freedom. It only follows that roles for older women will also become more layered. “Cinema in its entirety is changing and strong stories have replaced formula films. Lipstick Under My Burkha, which has come into the limelight for its altercations with the CBFC, also portrays the love affair of Ratna Pathak Shah with a much younger man, while in Ramesh Sippy’s next film, Shimla Mirchi, Hema Malini also reportedly makes a comeback as a woman in love with a younger man.

Now, I see that it is beyond that and I am determined to keep telling such stories,” she said. And, if you look at the controversy that Lipstick is going through, that may be the reason why,” she states. You have to remember, though, that the film was originally a play by Mahesh Elkunchwar and in theatre, you have enough freedom of expression and this would not be considered unusual at all,” says Lilette Dubey, who plays one of the leading ladies of Sonata. So, when you look at theatrical themes through the lens of the camera, it makes them unusual.“We’re all in boxes — you, me, that woman in the window,” says Shabana Azmi in the opening frame of the trailer for Aparna Sen’s next directorial, Sonata.What Lipstick director Alankrita Srivastava said at a recent talk, however, gives one hope that more such movies are on the horizon.“I think the reason why the plot for Sonata works is because people are not used to seeing cinema like this. You have Judy Dench acting in a James Bond movie and Meryl Streep doing multiple kinds of roles.Sonata is not the only movie, which seeks to explore sexual liberation in older women. “If you look at Hollywood films, you have so many older women acting in roles that fall beyond the typical. The movie itself seems to be a way for the women portrayed in it to break out the ‘boxes’ designated to them by society.

“I think that the CBFC, as well as other forces, have tried to silence the voices of women in particular.Elaborating on the reasons as to why there is now a rise in nuanced characterisation in older roles for women, Supriya explains that it is probably a part of the changing narratives that Indian cinema is undergoing overall. The shades of the character are being explored now and one is very happy to be a part of that,” she says. I think Indian filmmakers are still afraid to take the risk.” As it turns out now, neither on screen. After all, age is no barrier on the stage..“It was a blast for us to film the movie, but I was a bit curious to see if the audience would be interested in three middle-aged women chit-chatting, and the responses on Facebook have been overwhelming. The audience has also got access to global cinema now and is, therefore, more appreciative of offbeat films,” she adds