A lively, warm film punctuated by flawless performances
It’s not often that a female-led dramedy in the Mumbai cinema industry comes along with the kind of refreshing lightness that first-time director Tahira Kashyap projects her intentions with. What is Sharmaji’s daughter?.
Bright and breezy, but not overly frothy, the film, written by the director himself, expands on the concerns he espouses in his books (12 commandments of being a woman, 7 sins of being a motheretc.) in, by and large, a similar non-propagation vein.
The film centers on five main characters – three women, two of them married and one in a serious relationship, and two teenage girls dealing with the throes of puberty – who navigate the curve balls that life and society throw at them. They sometimes grumble and resent others, but they eventually find a way to stay strong.
On the contrary, What is Sharmaji’s daughter? Occasionally succumbs to strokes of hyperbole and expansive nature but that deficiency does not come in the way of general clarity of thought and treatment. It’s a lively, warm film marked by insight, wit and imagination and buoyed by a bunch of flawless performances.
Three adult characters – Jyoti Sharma (Sakshi Tanwar), Kiran Sharma (Divya Dutt) and Tanvi Sharma (Syami Kher) – face different challenges. Each of them has a male partner and the pressure to fulfill personal aspirations that affects their lives and relationships.
Two marrieds, coaching center teacher Jyoti and homemaker Kiran, each have a daughter, Swati (Avashyak Vanshika Taparia) and Gurveen (Arista Mehta). The girls are classmates and inseparable friends who hide nothing from each other.
Swati, who is only 14 years old, is ashamed that she is not menstruating yet. “I’m not normal,” she laments. The girl is selected to play “Ramu Kaka” in a school play. That didn’t sit well with him. The selection, she thinks, has something to do with her lack of feminine curves.
Swati’s blue guise rubs off on her equation with mother Jyoti, who also has to deal with colleagues at the coaching center, both female and male. But it was her daughter’s accusation that hurt the most.
Jyoti’s husband, Sudhir (Sharib Hashmi), who works the night shift, is more than supportive and takes care of the household chores while his wife is at work during the day. Kiran has no such luck. Her husband corporate honcho Vinod (Parveen Dabas) has no time for her. He doesn’t try to converse with anyone.
A woman from Patiala who has been in Mumbai for just over a year, Kiran has no friends. He wants to interact with other residents of his housing complex but does not make any progress with them. He is forced to withdraw more of his shell.
Kiran’s only confidant is a young male family helper. His simple ambition is to get the ladies of the building to play tambola with him. But easier said than done.
Baroda’s daughter Tanvi, who shares an apartment with two other girls in the same building, has shifted to Mumbai for her cricket career. She has to reckon with a lover – model and aspiring actor Rohan (Rabjit Singh), a fun-loving but orthodox Harianvi boy, who hopes that the girl he wants to marry will one day give up cricket and become a domestic.
Each of these women and girls face multiple problems – most of them not of their own making – and find ways around them Finding solutions and overcoming obstacles is not easy. The men around them don’t make things easy for them.
men in What is Sharmaji’s daughter? They are not monsters, but they bring their own obsessions and assumptions about women and what they want, need or deserve. While one of them insists to his lady that he is not an insecure guy and does not want to leave her, the other claims that he is not a cheap guy. These are meant to be words of reassurance but, unbeknownst to the men, have the opposite effect.
Jyoti’s daughter has a bad temper. Kiran’s problems stem from her loneliness, her husband’s indifference and the neighbors’ steadfast disapproval of her friendly feelings. And Tanvi struggles to balance her goals with the demands of a lover who can’t see beyond her nose.
Barring a few stray scenes that feel extraneous to the film’s simplistic, slice-of-life quality, What is Sharmaji’s daughter? It goes awry when it stages cricket action. The portrayal of Tanvi’s exploits on the field – with a commentator drifting away from the soundtrack – and some of her assertions about women’s cricket in India lack nuance, if they are in fact off the mark.
However, minor flaws in an otherwise thoroughly watchable film made more entertaining by the continuity of the lead actors. Each of the five women is given a distinct tone and timbre. The actors fleshed out their parts to perfection.
Sakshi Tanwar’s ambitious working woman epitomizes tenacity dividing her time between her home and her job. Divya Dutt’s neglected and scorned woman is given to emotionally more and emotional work. Saiyami Kher’s lady exudes just the right combination of tenacity and vulnerability, with a mind and goals of her own.
Its real star What is Sharmaji’s daughter? Banshika Taparia. Playing the indomitable and unpredictable Swati who loves to hate her mother, she is a livewire who delivers an absolutely stunning performance. Arista Mehta, as the stoic Gurvin, who makes a revelation only to pleasantly surprise her distraught mother, is the perfect foil for Taparia.
What is Sharmaji’s daughter?On Prime Video, a film that’s worth your time.
