Consent on screen has come a long way. Bollywood seems to be finally getting the memo.
From “tu haan kar ya na kar, tu hai meri Kiran” to having two films in the same week, Prem Keetanu and Pooja Meri Jaan , where the woman’s decision is final and binding…
Pooja Meri Jaan must have sounded intriguing on paper. The story revolves around Pooja ( Mrunal Thakur ), an actor who plays Juliet in a theatre production of Romeo and Juliet. Her on-stage Romeo, Aniket (Vikram Singh Chauhan), proposes to her after a performance. He ends up taking his own life, leaving Pooja accused of abetting his suicide. Did her rejection and those angry words really push him to take such a drastic step? That question forms the crux.
Too shocked to respond, she rejects him after the show, and, in a fit of rage, tells him he can “go and die” for all she cares.
One hears that the film’s release was stuck for nearly four years before this Navjot Gulati directorial finally saw the light of day. The film starts on a promising note, venturing into the tricky, often misunderstood territory of how consent can be fluid and, most importantly, how it must be respected at every stage. A woman may choose to be in a relationship with someone one day and change her mind the next, and that decision deserves to be accepted without question. The film also touches upon the complicated issue of leading someone on, among several other facets of relationships and rejection. The problem is that, as complex as this entire discussion is, the film itself never quite arrives at a satisfying understanding of it. Niren Bhatt’s screenplay does have a promising arc. What may appear to the outside world as an innocuous crush can, from the woman’s perspective, quickly take on an unsettling, even sinister, dimension. The screenplay also brings the alpha male mentality into the conversation, examining the sense of entitlement that can turn attraction into obsession. But the film ultimately takes the most convenient route out of this morally murky territory. In its eagerness to establish Pooja’s innocence, it ties up the ambiguity far too neatly. Overall, Pooja Meri Jaan deserves credit for attempting to engage with a conversation that Hindi cinema has, till now, approached rather simplistically. It understands that consent is not a one-time contract, and attraction does not create entitlement. More importantly, rejection, however hurtful, cannot be treated as an offence. There are moments when the film gets close to the grey areas of modern relationships, where intentions can be misread. Unfortunately, it lacks the courage to stay in that grey zone for long. Instead, it eventually opts for a convenient resolution, diluting some of the complexity it so carefully built up.
Yet, given how relevant its themes remain today, the delay has done little to date the subject.
