Doctor G normalizes the V word in the male gaze

The vagina is often invoked in this film, and not always with a purpose. Being a film about gynaecologists, the V word is bound to recur in the conversations. I get that totally. What I don’t get is the modalities of a female intercession of the male paranoia about the female anatomy. Is it okay for a woman to speak so flippantly about the female body in front of the male just so that they can watch him cringe? Isn’t this like playing into sexist hands? Seldom do we come across a Bollywood film that goes beyond the toxicity of the male gaze to explore a question that haunts gender relations since Adam fell in love with Eve and there was no Steve in the picture to take Adam away from Eve: what makes a man cross the line from conservative to liberal and yet secretly remain a cad? By now Ayushmann Khurrana has become a past master at passing out of the Cad Academy with honours. His character begins by being cockily inured in all the prejudices of the alpha male and then rapidly makes its way to the other end. Very often Anubhati Kashyap’s debut film goes from over-cocky to over-cute, and not smoothly. Her vision is refreshingly ballsy but sometimes self-defeating in its determination to show the middle finger to male biases.

I don’t know at what exact point in Doctor G Khurrana’s Uday shifts from being a sexist reluctant gynaecologist to a committed doctor. The tone-deafness that grips Dr Uday also seeps into the narrative sometimes. And very often in the first half we hear cringe-worthy dialogues about various human orifices that are brought up just so that the men in the audience feel squirmy in their seats. And then you have a nurse telling a woman petrified of an injection, “You weren’t scared of the big injection that your husband gave you, now you are scared of this small injection.” If a male director was behind this kind of innuendo he would be branded lewd. Doctor G is directed by the talented Anubhuti Kashyap who never lets us forget she is treading without inhibitions into the domain of the male gaze. Why should the men have all the fun? The female gynaecologists take turns ragging the cat among the pigeons, the only male gynaecologist Uday. Rakul Preet Singh who plays a doctor but who looks like an invitee at an all-night mushaira, tells Ayushmann’s repressed character to spank her as part of the ragging. I wonder what the outcome would be if he took up her offer. She is engaged to marry a Muslim man — yes, I bring the religious difference to notice as the screenplay itself draws attention to it—but doesn’t mind sharing a completely unnecessary liplock with her colleague Uday. We are supposed to take this cheesy act of infidelity as casually as Rakul Preet does. Very soon, the behavioural contradictions of Khurrana’s Uday begin to get to us. This is the most unpleasant character Khurrana has played so far. Uday is an opportunist and a slimy one at that. But he comes around sooner rather than later. The last 35-40 minutes of the film when he sheds his sexist plumes to reveal the sensitive core is more interesting than any of the gender-challenging backchat that preoccupies the front seat in this modern fable on the male ego being on the back foot. There is a lovely subplot tucked away in the noisy framework of this medical comedy about a doctor who thinks he can’t be a gynaecologist because he doesn’t have a vagina (ha ha), involving an underage girl (gently played by Ayesha Khaduskar) who has gotten herself pregnant. How Khurrana’s Uday handles the girl’s unwanted pregnancy is explored with finesse and honesty that I found lacking in some parts of this aggressive comedy of womanism. Not all of it works. The strand about Uday being embarrassed by his brassy mother (Sheeba Chaddha, ever-ready to play women who embarrass their children) needed further exploration. But I thought Uday’s bonding with his tenant Chaddhi (Abhay Chintamani) was a refreshing take on the hero-sidekick equation that Hindi cinema has been sold on since Mehmood and Shammi Kapoor and Dilip Kumar and Johnny Walker shared a cinema-defining bromance. There is plenty in Doctor G that’s rich in unexplored emotions. But Shefali Shah as the senior doctor must stop rolling her eyes at the entire world. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.