Opening Doorz

By Martin D’Souza | Opening Doorz Editorial | December 12, 2016

When kissing scenes get technical!
Ever since the ‘embargo’ on kisses was lifted on screen in Bollywood, lip-locks between actors have gone from good, bad to ugly. No one seems to be interested in the plot or the situation as to why two actors need to have an emotional smooch. All that the directors or production houses are interested, it seems, is in having that mandatory scene where the actors get intense.

Most times, this act turns out repulsive rather than being attractive, which is actually what it is supposed to be. Look at Hollywood films; never will you find an actor awkward doing this scene, or never will you find this scene out of place or unwarranted. In Bollywood, it’s as though we have got a new toy and we need to show it off.

If this is the way kisses are going to be displayed on screen in Bollywood, I would prefer the meeting of flowers, or the accidental fall of the steel glass full of milk, which you know depicts what!

The serial-kisser meets his match

Emraan Hashmi, our original serial kisser, has done it time and again, but you will not find even one of his kisses that has really stood out. All that the directors were thinking off was the mandatory lunge to the lips whenever Emraan has been on screen. And though this may have given him the ‘Serial-Kisser’ tag, he does no justice to the art of kissing.

Consider this: two years ago, this serial-kisser was left frustrated in Hamari Adhuri Kahaani. With Vidya Balan as his co-star, he never really came close to her lips? Why? I guess, Vidya might have seen no sense in the situation for a lip-lock, although the ‘situation may have demanded it’!

Poor Emraan, Mohit Suri got him, time and again, dangerously close to Vidya Balan’s lips, and then like a good boy, was sent for the traditional hug!

Vidya Balan knows the meaning of intense performance and she definitely knows what it means to lock lips in a scene and make it stand out, years after it has been enacted.

Vidya Balan in Guru and Ishquiya

The first time Vidya locked lips, or rather, a lip-lock was made to look intense, sexy and passionate was in Mani Ratnam’s Guru in 2007. In this film, there is this sequence in the rain with the actress sitting in a wheelchair when she embraces Madhavan for a passionate kiss. This scene was mind-blowing, in the sense, that it pushed the plot several notches higher. This was not just a kiss inserted to entice, it was a moment in the movie that dwelled on her relationship and the state of her mind.

There was this helpless woman, her lover and rain pouring down. The moment was poignant, the situation emotional and the sequence that followed, natural. The progression to the kiss was flawless. Today, you will see actors straining to kiss with no intent for passion or no passion for intent. It has become mechanical, like our well-choreographed fight sequences.

Another lip-lock of Vidya that stands out even today was in Ishquiya with Arshad Warsi. Now, Arshad has no tag of a serial kisser but he is a fantastic actor. This was an out-and-out raunchy situation that was in your face.

Director Abhishek Chaubey had the situation in control. He also had the two actors in his grasp: he knew what he wanted them to do and how. Vidya’s was a fiery character. Arshad, too, had this devil may care attitude. Both were up the wall. The ‘passion’ that emanated from the screen was to be seen to be believed.

The one who lifted the veil off lip-locks

Apart from Vidya Balan, it is Mallika Sherawat, the first lady of a smooch in India, who made lip-locks fashionable. When actors were wary of kissing, she went to town advertising her 15 smooches with Himanshu Malik in Khwahish almost 13 years ago.

It was the kisses more than the movie that was being advertised which proved to be a good ‘launch pad’ for Mallika. And she has never disappointed whenever she has been called on the screen to test her boast!

With Ranvir Shorey in Ugly Aur Pagli, she demonstrated what a proper kiss should be like and later with Rahul Bose in Maan Gaye Mughal-E-Azaam she treated the audience to lip-nibbling!

In contrast, what we saw in Befikre was a futile attempt at looking hot. There were more than 15 kisses as the movie started and many more between the lead pair of Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, but none matched the intensity of Vidya Balan or even came close to Mallika Sherawat for its naughtiness!

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