Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017)
Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava
Written by Alankrita Shrivastava
Starring Ratna Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Aahana Kumra
Release Date July 21st, 2017
Published July 19th 2017
“You know what our problem is? We dream too much?”
That quote is devastating. It comes from the movie Lipstick Under My Burkha from writer director Alankrita Shrivastava. It’s a remarkable film about four wonderful characters staring into the face of oppression and still trying to live their dreams. Lipstick is only Shrivastava’s second directorial feature and yet she directs with the surety and beauty of a veteran filmmaker. Her eye and ear are perfectly in tune to her characters, who each have big beautiful beating hearts.
Auntie (Ratna Pathak) is at the center of the story, a brilliant, well-respected elder in her community. Yet, she is only 55 years old and a widow and her desires have not cooled with age. Auntie has been Auntie for so long that just trying to say her own name is a challenge. Reclaiming her name is the start of admitting she still has the desires she’s been nursing via a romance novel that she reads as the film’s narration with the story acting as a not too blatant Greek chorus to the story of the movie.
Auntie’s desires come to the fore when she meets a much younger swim instructor whose muscled torso fires the dreams she has of the male character in her book. Pushing her desires ever further she begins to carry on a secret phone relationship with the young man and dreams of perhaps finding the courage to tell him who she really is and how he stirs her soul and so much more. Ratna Pathak could not be better cast in the role of Auntie, still a beauty at 55 with tender eyes and an inner strength radiates to the very end.
Read my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.
