Review of BA Pass, a 2013 Ajay Bahl film starring Shilpa Shukla and Shadab Kamal
When characters in a movie have unclear motives, the audience feels disconnected. Mukesh, the protagonist of BA Pass, is a naive middle-class college-going boy who moves into his aunt’s house in central Delhi along with his younger sisters after the death of their parents. of the. He is made to do all the household chores like sweeping the floor and serving drinks to guests. Basically, his life is pretty similar to Harry Potter’s in the Dursleys’ house, only a little better, at least he sits at the dining room table. He has a cousin who is just as much of an idiot (although not in physics) as Dudley Dursley with Harry; he doesn’t go a day without his cousin bullying him for not getting a job and contributing to the family income. Mukesh meets Sarika, a mysterious woman in her thirties, at one of the kitten parties organized by his aunt. The next morning, she calls him home to work.
The two quickly spring into action. She trains him to control, he learns obediently. And all the time we wonder what’s going through Mukesh’s head, but we never get an answer. Does he do it purely for sex? She loves? What happens after making love? do they speak? Does he become protective of her? Is he so stupid that he doesn’t once suspect that she might be using him? Or that she may be involved with other men like him? Our penetrating questions do not get a satisfactory answer.
BA Pass is not a place to look for character studies. The film takes the maxim ‘Desperation drives the poor and dispossessed to commit dishonorable acts’ taken literally without adding any layer of psychological complexity to make us empathize with those who commit such acts. There is a complacency, a ‘just go with the flow’ attitude that we see in Mukesh that quite disturbs us. Sarika drops too many clues along the way that clearly suggest that she intends to make him a gigolo, and yet he remains ignorant. He doesn’t seem to have blind or unconditional love for her either, so what is he looking for from her? He can’t be foolish enough to fall for her traps so quickly, so easily; he reads Kasparov and plays chess with aces (he plays chess with Johnny, a guy he befriends in the graveyard), and anyone who is good at chess is expected to have minimal intelligence. And it doesn’t help that Shadab Kamal, the actor who plays him, duly plays his role without trying to redeem the mischaracterization through his performance. When Mukesh is forced to turn to gay prostitution after getting into trouble and losing all of his clients, Shadab doesn’t convey the hesitation, the humiliation that any straight man would face in such a situation. He just goes with it, and I find that disconcerting.
Mukesh’s sexual partner, Sarita, wears a different colored bra each time, but her character reveals no color in her personality except black. So I’m surprised that the costume designer thought it would be better to change the color of her underwear every time wearing black would have worked better to define the character that she really is. There is no good side of Sarita, there is no gray tone, only black. In an earlier scene, she mentions that she “traveled a lot with her father and saw a lot of things at a very young age.” We wish she had revealed exactly what she had seen, and what made her such a kind woman. The director does not explore this aspect and chooses to leave everything implicit. “Oh, he must have seen bad things! Bad things!” is what we are supposed to understand from her comment and accept it. Again, no help from Shilpa Shukla, who dutifully but gently plays her rule.
Every time there is a sex scene in the film, there is a large object to hide the no-nos, and in one case, the scene is out of focus. Large objects strategically placed in front to cover the entire pelvic area make the sex scenes look rehearsed because the movements are too rhythmic. A smarter thing to do would have been to cut to close-ups of the characters enjoying themselves since censors can’t object to a face, can they?
The great thing about the BA Pass is that, thankfully, it’s short, lasting just 95 minutes. Could have ended a scene, one faded earlier and had a better impact. There are funny bits in the movie, like Sarita’s biji warning Mukesh about Sarita’s character, calling her ‘nagan, kanjari (derogatory word used for a lower caste associated with activities like prostitution)’ before Sarita is able to lock her in the bedroom, or the client who narrates episodes of her favorite series while having sex with Mukesh. The role of a client whose husband is in a coma (guest appearance by actress Deepti Naval) remains underused.
The biggest mistake BA Pass makes is that it highlights every film festival where it has won awards or been screened, even before the movie starts. This raises expectations, and you anticipate a movie that doesn’t take the easy road of ‘just letting go’. Unfortunately, it is into this very trap that BA Pass stumbles and cannot escape.
