Why cannibalism in Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon's Bhediya is a joke!

Varun Dhawan’s new comedy-horror  Bhediya has him making jokes about eating up his  friends after being bitten by a werewolf. Cannibalism is no joke. The new film by Luca Guadagnino Bones & All, featuring his Call Me By My Name hero Timothee Chalamet, one of the brightest talents to hit Hollywood in a long time, is a very disturbing portrayal of cannibalism. Bhediya  chooses to make  a joke out of it. And there is no harm in that. Comedies are at their  best when they remind us that nothing in life , no matter how seemingly sacred or inviolable, is to be taken seriously In director Mimi Cave’s disturbing savage yet funny cannibalistic comedy-drama entitled Fresh, the hero, Steve (Sebastian Stan) is into human flesh. It’s not a kink, it’s his bigtime  entrepreneurial passion. Yes , he is a cannibal who supplies human meat to the cannibalistic  connoisseurs all over the world. This is the first film that blows the lid off the underground cannibals’ community that exists  globally. People eat their own kind. Fresh is razor-sharp, scalpel-precise in its narrative focus. Steve’s scalpel carves itself only on human female skin: always female, never male. Steve says we men don’t taste that good, we’ll have to take his word for it. First-time director Mimi Cave has a lot of fun with her feast-friendly hero’s ravenous appetite. In the way, Sebastian Stan plays the cannibal entrepreneur, singing and dancing his way to the sizzling oven, I was reminded of Armie Hammer…I mean, imagine if those scandalous text messages were actually a prelude to something far more  sinister, far more culinary. Did Luca Guadagnino get the idea  for  his stunning Bones & All  from Armie Hammer  with whom Luca worked in Call Me by Your Name? Back home, Bhaskar Hazarika’s stunning Assamese film Aamis  , a love story about two voracious meat eaters who end up eating human flesh, is hard to digest. But it’s also hard  not to get sucked into the vortex of the insatiable violence that gathers at the centre of this nerve wracking drama. The filmmakes its journey from forbidden courtship to unspeakable crime in a narrative that is not fully convincing but always compelling right till the shocking, revolting finale. This is not an easy film to pull off. Bhaskar Hazarika manages it with timorous but  unwavering grace, thanks to his lead pair who furnish an uneasy but convincing graph to their off-kilter characters. Lima Das, as a bored wife who discovers a stunning appetite for  adventurous eating, chews on every morsel of her meaty role as though it’s her last. There are remarkably accomplished performances in Aamis, a film that is savagely original. The closest parallel I can think of is Julia Ducournau’s 2017 French film Raw. And in that, no one crossed culinary boundaries for love. Bhediya is not to be taken even halfway as seriously Bones & All, Aamis or Raw. But its jokey references to flesh eating can be taken lightly only if the  screenplay knows where to draw the line. Our comedies rarely know where to stop.

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 .