Bhumi Pednekar will next be seen in Badhaai Do. (Source: Bhumi Pednekar/Instagram) Until about a decade ago, female actors in mainstream Hindi movies were often seen playing cardboard cut-outs. Of course, there were a few splashes of women trying to break the glass ceiling but those were so few and far between that every time it happened, it led to chatter about “women-oriented” roles and films. We are still not in a world where female characters are given substantial weight in a mainstream Hindi film but with every passing year, we see lesser films where female actors are expected to play arm-candy. When we look back at this phase of Hindi cinema decades from now, a few actors will stand out as those who aided this revolution and Bhumi Pednekar is certainly one of them.
Bhumi, who will next be seen in Harshvardhan Kulkarni’s Badhaai Do, is playing a queer character in the film. We are living in 2022 but a mainstream Hindi film heroine playing a homosexual character is still considered a bold, risky move. Bhumi, however, hasn’t picked such a role for the first time. Her choice of Dum Laga Ke Haisha as her debut vehicle is just as impressive today as it was seven years ago. Using body transformation photos often feels like a gimmicky tool for actors to promote their films, but when it is obvious that this wasn’t a ploy, but a conscious choice for a newbie, it makes you respect the actor who is ready to go the extra mile.
Watching her play a house help in Zoya Akhtar’s segment in Lust Stories left the audience spellbound. Bhumi’s Sudha had no dialogues for the entire segment, and yet, her presence was a strong force in every scene. Sudha left much to our imagination and filled in the blanks with her desolate eyes. In Sonchiriya, which is certainly Bhumi’s most immersive performance to date, the actor melted into Indumati and it was almost impossible to imagine that this was the same woman who had played Sandhya in Dum Laga Ke Haisha.
With Alankrita Shrivastava’s Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare, Bhumi took on the role of a regular woman who is trying to figure out life in her 20s and is unafraid of making a few mistakes. It was a unique choice for an actor who had last appeared in a mainstream film with Kartik Aaryan.
Bhumi Pednekar in Sonchiriya. Bhumi’s other film choices like Saand Ki Aankh and Bala will hardly be classified as commercially mainstream, but they have certainly strengthened her filmography. For an actor of her calibre, who is changing the norm of the Hindi film industry with her dynamic choices, it appears a bit strange when she picks a film like Pati Patni Aur Woh. The film was made with the intention of pleasing the masses, and was promoted as a progressive version of the Sanjeev Kumar-Vidya Sinha original but it certainly did not tick all the right boxes as far as being forward-thinking was concerned. Even with Bala, while Bhumi’s intentions might have been in the right place, but the choice of her makeup certainly did not help the cause her character was trying to represent.
Since her debut film seven years ago, Bhumi has appeared in a diverse range of films that has created a filmography that’s worth cherishing. With Badhaai Do, she is pushing the boundary for mainstream Hindi movies and the roles that women get to play in them.
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