Bewakoofiyaan more than just a love story, says director Nupur Asthana

This week’s release, Bewakoofiyaan, is Nupur Asthana’s sophomore directorial effort. Her first film was the teenybopper rom-com Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge (2011), a sort-of You’ve Got Mail meets The Truth About Cats and Dogs with Facebook playing a supporting character. Despite its questionable logic, the film’s breezy spirit and attractive, young cast found favour with multiplex audiences and it proved to be an unexpected hit.

But Asthana has been connecting with young audiences since 1998 when she, at the age of 26, wrote and directed Hip Hip Hurray, a cult TV show that ‘90s kids will remember fondly as a template for college life that was far more accurate than what Bollywood had portrayed (remember St Xavier’s College as depicted in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, released the same year).

Amidst a jam-packed day involving many interviews and physiotherapy for a stressed-out back, Asthana and I had a chat about making ‘youth-oriented films’ like Bewakoofiyaan (which stars Ayushmann Khurrana, Sonam Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor) and more. Excerpts:

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From Hip Hip Hurray to Mahi Way to your films Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge and now Bewakoofiyaan, it has been 16 years of directing material that relates to a particular segment of the youth in this country. Would you say this is your comfort zone or is it just something that’s just happened? 

Well I also directed a drama miniseries called Hubahu but that gets forgotten amidst my other work mentioned above. I think it’s definitely my comfort zone but having said that it’s equally true that these are the projects that got green-lit. I’ve written/developed scripts that fall into other genres as well and I hope that I get to make those very soon.

From Purab Kohli and Peeya Rai Chowdhary to Saqib Saleem and Saba Azad, you’ve worked with young and fresh-faced actors from two entirely different generations. What would you say are the major differences between what teens or young actors were like back in the ’90s and today?

I think actors today know very early on what they want, what they aspire to be, what their game plan should be and how they ought to navigate the industry. The Hip Hip Hurray generation was more naïve and trusting. I guess it comes from the exposure today. The world has opened up so much more with social media making everything so immediate and accessible.

Is there a disconnect between how the industry portrays young people and how they actually are, you think? If so, what do you wish would change?

I think I’ve managed to portray young people and their lives pretty realistically so far. Research always helps. I remember for _Hip Hi_p… we had a counselor and a psychologist on board to help ensure that the stories I was writing, the emotions of youngsters I was portraying could be authentic.

The Bewakoofiyan trailer reminds one of Meet The Parents and Father Of The Bride, aside from also being based on a familiar movie trope ie impressing the parent before you can marry the girl. What are the factors that, according to you, make Bewakoofiyan different from other films in this genre?

The trailer only showcases the take-off point of the film. There is another strong, deeper theme running through the film. The fact is that today we are victims of consumer lifestyles – what brands we wear, what cars we drive, the limit of our credit card… we’ve begun to define ourselves by these choices, we’ve let them become our identity. How do we let this impact our relationships in good times and bad? In this rat race of the corporate world have we begun to measure character and success by the size of our pay cheques? These are some of the questions raised in this love story.

Do socio-cultural sensibilities and censorship norms prevent you from pushing the envelope?

I’ve always pushed the envelope in my simple stories about urban people. Whether it was a school girl who stole to give people gifts to gain friends; or a school sports captain who was unfair to his own brother by keeping him out of the basketball team because he was worried about being accused of nepotism, to a large girl who while being discriminated against was equally guilty of being shallow; or raising questions about identity in the world of social media where the tussle between the real and virtual world becomes all consuming… I think I’ve explored issues and questions that have intrigued me and interested me.

Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge sported an overly glossy aesthetic that looked as though it were designed to appeal mainly to young urban audiences. Do you worry that it alienates a large part of your audience, who are seeing a whole different India from what you’re portraying?

Fraaandship… was addressed to urban young people who interact on social media. It’s a huge phenomenon that becomes obsessive and I wanted to tear into it and explore it in depth. I shot it in a real college in Pune that had an expansive campus. I wanted a college structure that looked attractive. I wanted kids to see it and think “Shit, I wish I studied there”. I wanted people in education to see this campus and think “Hey, we must start building campuses where kids would want to come to everyday”. And then I showed a world where we must tread with care… the virtual world can make you forget the real world which is in reality equally attractive and not anonymous. I wanted a small town kid to think “Okay, maybe this virtual world is not as cool as it’s made out to be. My world is pretty cool already.”

So no I was not worried about alienating audiences. I already knew that only a section of audiences would identify with it.

What was it like working with Habib Faisal (who wrote Bewakoofiyaan), someone who has written and directed films set both in glossy, urban India as well as small-town India?

Habib is a wonderful writer who has a lot of bounce in his writing. His characters are so real, well rounded… the world that he creates is always identifiable. There’s always a lot of subtext in his work which I like. It was quite an enriching experience to work with him. I think I got to learn a lot!