Bollywood star Alia Bhatt tackles domestic violence in Netflix’s ‘Darlings’

Liz Kang, CNN

In by Netflix Bollywood megastar Alia Bhatt’s latest big-budget Hindi movie ‘Darlings’ gets unexpected marriage advice from her mother: ‘Add rat poison to her food’.

It’s one of many drastic ideas the protagonists consider when faced with an abusive relationship and try, albeit awkwardly, to find a solution. But for all the comedy in the film’s twisted plot, the subject matter it tackles is deeply serious.

For Bhatt, who also served as the film’s co-producer, “Darlings” offered a chance to tackle the issue of domestic violence head-on.

“I have to prove a point, as a producer, that I’m not just producing a movie for fun,” she told CNN in a video interview from Mumbai. “I didn’t choose this subject because I could. I wanted. I chose it and I wanted to tell this story.

Now among Bollywood’s highest-paid talents, Bhatt was the highest-ranked woman in Forbes India’s latest report Celebrity 100 roster, with estimated earnings of over $7 million in 2019. Some of her most critically acclaimed performances have seen her portray dynamic, unconventional female characters in disturbing circumstances – a kidnapped migrant worker in “Udta Punjab” in 2016 or a woman sold into prostitution before becoming a rights activist in the recent hit “Gangubai Kathiawadi”.

The 29-year-old has also worked alongside some of India’s top female directors in recent years, including Meghna Gulzar and Zoya Akhtar. And with “Darlings” marking the debut of Bhatt’s new production house, Eternal Sunshine Productions, the actress hopes to use her role behind the scenes to encourage greater representation in Bollywood.

“I feel – slowly, slowly – being a very male-dominated room, I (now) see the balance. I see a lot of women,” she said. “And it happened at the over the past 10 years. I’ve seen change – and it’s coming at a very juicy and exciting time.

“Darlings” is essentially a mother-daughter tale about two women, Badru and Shamshu (played by Bhatt and Shefali Shah respectively), dealing with abuse. It’s a story told largely by women, with first director Jasmeet K. Reen also co-writing the screenplay.

The film, which was well received by critics in India, tackles the subject of domestic violence with great care. Reen consciously refrained from showing violence in the early scenes of the film, symbolizing how repeated abuse had become normalized to the point of being invisible.

“I didn’t mean to sensationalize,” she told CNN.

As the abusive nature of Badru’s marriage is exposed, the mother-daughter couple’s urgency to confront and remove themselves from abuse also increases. Reen said the main characters were informed by her own closeness to domestic violence, recounting a case where her aunt called her to ask if her husband had ever hit her. The director, who was initially appalled by the question, realized that it wasn’t her marriage or her aunt that was the problem – but rather a culture where violence is rampant enough that the question arose. pose first.

“You grew up with it, so you sympathize (and) understand (him) more,” she said. “And maybe that helps you create stronger, non-stereotypical (female) characters.”

The World Health Organization has ranked India among 35 countries with the highest rate domestic violence, estimating that 35% of women have been victims of physical or sexual violence by a partner at least once. An Indian government inquiry conducted between 2019 and 2021 also found that only 14% of Indian women who experienced physical or sexual violence sought help to prevent further abuse.

Telling her story in this context, Reen was careful not to trivialize the topic. “It’s not a normal Bollywood movie,” she said. “I tried to play with the structure, I tried to play with the genre – to say something and be sensitive to it.”

The Indian film industry has a complex relationship with depictions of abuse. According to Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, co-authors of the book “Bollywood’s New Woman”, Hindi cinema has a long history of “both subtextual and explicit engagement with the issue of domestic violence”.

They jointly told CNN via email that to date, Bollywood’s approach to domestic violence can be divided into two parts: one where violence against women is normalized and the another that demonstrates “both the violence suffered by women and their impulse to resistance”. The authors cited Alia Bhatt’s 2014 film “Highway,” in which her character publicly confronts and denounces her attacker, as an example of the latter.

“Bollywood, like most industries in India, is male-dominated and that largely determines who is represented and how,” said Anwer and Arora, associate clinical professor at Purdue University’s Honors College and professor of English and Communication and Women’s and Gender Studies. at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, respectively. “All of this is determined by a structural inequality that is gendered in nature.”

Female-led productions like “Darlings,” however, are increasingly common in Bollywood — and they’re changing the way women are involved in storytelling, said Bhatt, who was also involved in pre-production and revisions of scripts. Reen praised Netflix for encouraging her to tell this story, saying she hopes “other filmmakers will be encouraged to write more stuff like this.”

Both women also credited their own mothers as sources of inspiration and support.

“I come from a middle-class family, but my mom was supportive of my dreams,” Reen said.

Bhatt, who is currently expecting a child with husband Ranbir Kapoormeanwhile said her mother – actress Soni Razdan – used to go to movie sets during her pregnancy ‘because she was shooting for TV shows and they couldn’t write her “.

“I may not talk about it enough or too often. But (she) left a very, very important mark in my life. Bhat explained. “My mother is a huge inspiration to me.”

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