Satyaprem Ki Katha: Kiara Advani’s casual amendment of the mainstream heroine

In a scene from Satyaprem ki Katha, Katha played by Kiara Advani comes clean about the reason why she hasn’t been sharing her bed with her husband. Pestered and cornered into opening up about a traumatic episode from her life, she neither collapses nor wilts under the weight of emotion. Here is a woman, scarred, but also emboldened by the very release of that pain. The mere act of letting go of a tragedy makes her lighter. It’s the kind of role that most mainstream actresses wouldn’t have attempted a couple of decades ago. To have your character be driven by trauma and taboo, quite simply, isn’t the hallmark that Bollywood has built its heroines around. And yet Advani is commendable as Katha, as a woman who bursts into life every now and then, but never quite settles into its rhythms. It’s another role that establishes the actress as a frontrunner for casually altering our perception of mainstream actresses.

The mainstream heroine is a monolith, a one-dimensional caricature of blood sans sweat, that eventually becomes the conquest most heroic arcs are completed by. It’s a role that has created as many icons as much it has birthed stereotypes. The heroine can be pompous, snarky, brutal even, but rarely has she been allowed an interiority that manifests as a provocation; something that upsets the status quo between beauty and benevolence. i.e. What if all of it is a front for something more sinister or revealing about us? In Netflix’s Guilty, Advani plays an edgy, but compassionate woman who has to unlearn her own methods of viewing the world. It’s more of an inward journey.

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Not too dissimilar is her cocky, but satisfying performance in Indoo Ki Jawani, where a prejudiced but kind woman must recalibrate her politics to better see the people around her. In the superhit, Jugg Jugg Jeeyo, Advani wiggles out of a hapless marriage, while the shadow of her in-laws loom over her. Here she becomes the cornerstone of her mother-in-law’s epiphany, the rock that allows her to finally leap for justice of sorts. In _Shershaah_, a more typical role alongside the man who eventually became her partner in life, Advani is mesmeric when imagined through the trained lens of the Hindi cinema archetype. She swivels, dances and charms her way through a film and a soundtrack for the ages. Besides these roles, Advani has also cracked into comedy, with performances like Govinda Naam Mera and Good Newwz. Not to mention that disarming cracker of a role in the first edition of Netflix’s Lust Stories.

Advani’s palette is yet to expand to wilder more challenging territories like noir and political dramas, and while those roles will eventually come her way she is still some way off than earning comparisons with her more recognisable peers. What she has, however, done with candour and cautious optimism is to approach difficult roles without actually breaking off from the traditions of the mainstream, its elaborate grammar. It’s probably easier to sink your teeth into material like Guilty, compared to importing that pathos and grimness to the texture of something that looks and sounds full-blooded mainstream. For example, in _Satyaprem Ki Katha_, Advani must become the subject of both affection and suspicion. Remain the beauty that she obviously is, but also embody the woman who, un-seductively if you like, looks beyond reach. In Jugg Jugg Jeeyo she plays a reluctant but outspoken wife to a husband who eventually sees her side. In both, she is the corner men turn past, to be able to see a new perspective of life.

When we talk of the mainstream, it automatically comes with its notions of grandeur, colourful traditions and a wholesome worship of the man, as the mover of things. Her latest film, likely to become a hit, isn’t too dissimilar but it does, in its own way, alter our perception of the heroine. There are no grand chases here, no battles between suitors and stalkers. Instead, there is a distinct solemnness to this woman, reluctant but clear bafflement at the world’s inability to rationalise her consent. It’s not a perfect alteration yet, for it still caws at the sight of its heroic figure, but at least it moves the needle on what the heroine can become – a human full of internal churn as opposed to external beauty.

Sure Advani is sensually and sexually attractive in a more traditional sense. It’s why she plays the perfect anchor for Kabir Singh’s decline into degeneracy. There is a story about how Johar tried to approach other actresses for that provocative role in Lust Stories, before Advani jumped onto it. It hints at someone willing to take risks, without the authority of acclaim. More than her performances that, still echo a certain rawness, it’s the actress’ desire to move across banks, change her own view of the river while it slowly, gradually re-makes its way, that feels promising. It’s in fact all the more crucial that she flits between playing the hero’s dame - distressed or not - and roles that challenge that motiveless view of the actress. It’s probably how that dated type of the pretty, damsel in distress will eventually be dismantled.

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