The 52: Badhaai Do
From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.
A few things you’ll learn from this film: getting bloodwork has never been so sexy, the LGBTQIA+ community can clock a lesbian from a mile away - even in a place where few are publicly out - and music videos must be accompanied by weird ads for H&M.
Badhaai Do tells the story of a lesbian PE teacher (why are they ALWAYS PE TEACHERS? I know why, it’s a stereotype, but c’mon, really?) and a gay cop, both of whom are closeted and both of whom are being pushed into marriages they don’t want.
What brings these unlikely compatriots together? Suman’s stalker! When Shardul comes to investigate and discovers she’s a lesbian, HE begins to stalk Suman and, after about a 3 second chat, they decide to get married to satisfy their families and give them a chance to live the lives they want.
I’m not against the premise (other than the cop-becomes-stalker thing, that was really weird), but it wasn’t executed… well. Shardul is a real piece of work, happy to completely ignore, isolate and delegate all work to Suman, and blow up when she brings her girlfriend over. Suman spent their honeymoon watching Shardul and his boyfriend and she was genuinely happy for them, truly a gem… so seeing Shardul’s destructive behaviour was really frustrating, and I hated how long it took for him to want to start working towards being a friend to her.
There were quite a lot of tropes that just made this a funny watch, like Suman getting her blood taken not because she needed to, but because she had the hots for the doctor. I’m not entirely sure on the acceptance of the lgbtqia+ community in India, but judging by the way both Shardul and Suman hid their identity and the way they continue to hide moving forward, the way Suman just went for it with her crush was really strange. Historically? We queers have a terrible gaydar. That would never work in real life.
It’s definitely not a brilliant movie, and a lot of things frustrated me, and I’m pretty sure H&M must’ve sponsored the film at some point because they got a good amount of screen time there, but was it terrible? Not at all. And by the end… Well, there was hope. There was hope.
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