She Season 2: Is Aaditi Pohankar the best contemporary actress since Shabana Azmi?

There is something about Aaditi Pohankar , something razor-sharp direct in the way she interacts with the camera. She strips her soul bare without a thought about how she looks without the conceit of concealment. I have seen the same quality in the Malayalam actress Kani Kusruti, but no one else from the current actresses, certainly not anyone in Bollywood. For those who are not familiar with this brutally stark series, its sexual frankness may seem a little alarming. I remember once critic describing Season 1 of She as “sloppy and sleazy”. It is what one would see in the series if the thought of a young Marathi undercover cop telling a steely-cold druglord(who has fallen in love with her) that she loves when he makes love to her(“Mere saath sex karta hai, apne aap se nahin") makes one queazy. Such bodily confessions are not what we expect our heroine to throw in our faces. Most women in our cinema are still not allowed to enjoy sex, or even if they do, at least not talk about it.

Never had anyone caring for her the way the druglord Nayak (played by a very interesting actor Kishore Kumar G) does, the series’ hero Bhumi (she is the hero, with more guts than all the male characters in her life)blossoms and withers at same time on getting this unexpected amorous attention from a man who teaches her how to kill someone you love because ….well, killing someone you hate is easy. Imtiaz Ali ’s writing is on the ball. The lazy self-indulgence of his last three films _Tamasha_ , _Jab Harry Met Sejal_ and _Love Aaj Kal_ are ruthlessly done away with. Ali is a man on a mission. He tracks down Bhumi’s journey from undercover cop to coverless libertine who enjoys every second of the druglord’s attention and, yes, sex, opening up to him as she has never done to anyone. Aaditi Pohankar peels off layer after layer of Bhumi’s inhibition. Pohankar plays the rogue cop as part-victim part-predator, sometimes a saviour other times a slut. In one early sequence, she is brutally beaten by a pimp that leaves her badly hurt in places where civilized men, even the most brutal of the ilk, don’t hurt women. Later, in a mid-section episode Bhumi the hell out of her husband who had abandoned her for being asexual. This is where the druglord Nayak comes in. Nayak makes Bhumi feel like a complete woman. In a monologue done in one take of nearly five minutes, Pohankar holds a masterclass on how to hold the camera’s attention without getting over-agitated. Her performance is edgy but never tilting towards on-camera acrobatics. She is keen but casual. The rest of the cast, including a fascinating eunuch act by Resh Lamba, is just what the script needs to keep it going through a second season without our interest flagging. I have to admit that there is too little plot here for seven lengthy episodes. After we get the point about a middle-class Maharashtrian undercover cop doing an indigenous version of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, the series tends to lose steam at key points. The climactic dialogue between pupil Bhumi and her mentor Jason Fernandes (Vishwas Kini, endearingly understated and masculine in an easygoing way) gives off indications of writing fatigue. This season of She should have been shorter by a few episodes. It had the potential of being even better than Season 1. But it messed up its chances of superiority by unnecessary explanations about events that are self-explanatory. Whatever the wounds in the plot, Aaditi Pohankar’s central performance makes up for the losses. I would love to see what this fearless actress does next. 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.