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Friday, October 4, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD GIPPI
EDITOR'S PICK
`Gippi`:
Endearing coming-of-age saga with realistic performances (IANS Film Review)
Rating: *** 1/2
At the end of this endearing film you have to admit it`s not just the
pre-pubescent protagonist who has come of age. So has mainstream Indian cinema.
It can now talk about issues such as homosexuality and menstruation without a
blush.
Meet Gippi then. She is free-spirited, unaffected, overweight and
under-confident, though not willing to show it (her lack of confidence, that
is). Gippi`s story could well have become a trite pedestrian exercize in cliched
sequences woven around the acne-ridden years of awkwardness and self-discovery.
Instead , debutant director Sonam Nair gives us vibrant vignettes from a young
defiant teenager`s life in a posh school (beautifully shot by cinematographer
Anshuman Mahaley) on the hills with her single mother (Divya Dutt, brilliant)
and her kid-brother who seems to like all the girlie things more than Dippi
does.
Fearless and without inhibitions, Nair`s narration takes us through Gippi`s life
of unfettered self-discovery. The film is littered with reams of well-written
scenes where we see Gippi going through situations that help her grow up.
There`s her mother`s painful breakup with Gippi`s father where Gippi must step
in to defend her mother`s descalating self-esteem. Then there is Gippi`s own
tryst with heartbreak when during her first serious crush with the campus`
resident James Dean (Taha Shah, well cast in his vain though benign character)
she discovers that being fat and unattractive is not such an appalling option
after all.
The process of Gippi`s self-exploration is lamentably not carried forward with
the confidence and smoothness that one experiences in the first-half of the film
when Gippi`s life is shown to be a series of unplanned near-catastrophes that
somehow stop short of reaching a point of no return.
In the second half, the entire chunk devoted to the school elections is
comparatively tame and lacking the sparkle evident in the rest of the writing.
Nonetheless there is so much to celebrate in this film, most of all the
performances. 14-year old Riya Vij makes an unlikely yet thoroughly convincing
heroine in a tale that requires her character to try everything, from a
brassiere to heartbreak for the first time. To her credit the girl sails through
all the tests put before her character. She is a prized find.
As for the ever-dependable Divya Dutta as Gippi`s mother, when has she ever let
down a film? As Dippi`s mother she puts spunk and spirit into her well-written
character. Casting in fact is the backbone of this film. Not just Riya in the
main role, even her friends in school are played by girls and guys who don`t
seem to fake it. They wouldn`t know how to!
The film also pays a homage to the songs of Shammi Kapoor in a rather gauche
onrush of feelings. But then awkwardness is a predominant mood in this work .
You can`t escape clumsiness when you are groping around at the beginning of
life`s unique journey.
So a big yippee for Gippi. It`s a coming-of-age saga told with a disarming lack
of artifice. The film`s joie de vivre envelopes you in a sunny embrace.
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Gippi is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Simla with her mother Pappi and little brother Booboo. She is overweight and awkward and doesn`t know how to handle the physical, emotional and social changes happening in her life. In school, she is a backbencher and is constantly bullied by the popular queen-bee Shamira. At home, she`s trying to figure out how to deal with living in a broken home. In the middle of all this chaos, she falls madly in love with an older, brooding heartbreaker. When her love story comes to a humiliating end, and she is publicly scorned, she decides to take her life in her hands and accepts Shamira`s challenge to stand against her in the school elections.
Whatever the final outcome might be, Gippi makes sure she has a great time in the journey, filling it with delicious desserts, funny teachers, school crushes, and Shammi Kapoor dances. Gippi is a coming-of-age story of an ordinary, overweight girl, who, through the course of the film, learns to love herself for exactly who she is. It is also a tale of an underdog, who picks herself up from nothing and finds herself at the top of her own little world.
Special Screening of Film Gippi Stills