Late 20s and early 30s, and the years that follow, are quite hard to navigate for single women living in India. While a lot of self-discoveries and “firsts” are yet to happen, simultaneously, there is also a pressure to get married, for the sole purpose of feeling “Whole”. Huma Qureshi’s film Single Salma deals with some of these turmoils in a woman’s life with subtle messaging and commentary on problematic behaviour and perspective (Nazariya) that have been normalised in a patriarchal setup. Single Salma, directed by Nachiket Samant, has its heart in the right place, but unfortunately, it’s also cursed with the overdone male gaze in Hindi cinema. Read on.
Plot
Single Salma tells us the story about Salma Rizvi (Huma Qureshi), a 33-year-old engineer working in Lucknow, the bread-winner of her family. She is smart, beautiful, and very capable, but also single. Salma’s life revolves around taking care of her parents, sisters, and brother, but it’s a thankless job that leaves her drained, she won’t show, but we see through her! Salma Rizvi does not live her life; she is essentially just surviving, burdened by the need to pay for a mortgage and fulfill her family’s demands. It’s only when her mother, the only empathetic person in the house, convinces her to get married and leave the worries of her house behind. Marriage is the only way out of this chaotic and ungrateful life. Enter, Sikandar (Shreyas Talpade), a sorted and settled businessman, who thinks Salma is out of her league, but luck favours him when Salma says yes to this proposal.
The plot twist takes place when Salma Rizvi meets Meet (Sunny Singh) during a work trip in London. In the second half, Salma’s boring single life is spiced up with two men wanting to marry her, a very “controversial” picture going viral, and many complications that finally push Salma to make a decision for herself.
Positives!
The first few minutes of the film instantly grabbed my attention. Well, maybe because, as a single woman dealing with some similar life problems as Salma, the relatability factor played a big part. There was an unspoken trust that built between me and Salma, and I knew she would take the right decisions, or well, sane decisions, no matter how crazy life gets. Huma Qureshi is the perfect fit for the role, bringing just the required maturity and emotional depth to this character.
The silent observations that Salma’s mother made in a chaotic room that her daughter held together so patiently, also left me with a wholesome yet heavy feeling. I loved the mother-daughter duo rejecting every weirdo that came with the marriage proposal, and how Chai acted as a metaphor for every “NO” that Salma said. Also, Salma Rizvi’s best friend and her practical solutions made a lot of sense to me. Period.
Shreyas Talpade is a delight on the screen. As the naive, simple man Sikandar, Shreyas Talpade is just effortless. Sunny Singh feels stiff in this character as the popular businessman Meet. While he delivers the straight-face expressions of Meet perfectly, it’s the other emotions of love and loss or heartbreak that don’t come across well.
The initial chemistry between Salma and Sikandar had the ticklish feeling to it, like something good was going to pan out for the two of them. While I was enjoying all the various emotions, good and bad, kinda also placing myself into a few of those moments, Nachiket Samant’s movie suddenly took a turn I was not ready for in any way. And I say this, not very gladly!
Bro, What Happened?
This question started to haunt me after the interval break. What I hoped would be a fresh narrative about a 33-year-old single woman’s self-discovery journey suddenly turned into a stale, overdone male-gaze narrative. With Meet entering Salma’s life, the latter started to look at herself differently. Meet was exactly opposite to her in terms of the life perspectives and principles that he brought to the table. Meet did not believe in the concept of marriage and was in an open relationship, which Salma had a hard time understanding.
But somehow, she still fell for his way of living life and took inspiration from it to live a carefree life herself. Meet convinced or rather mansplained Salma into believing that she was living a restricted life. And from thereon, there was no going back for her. Post that, she experienced many “firsts” like drinking alcohol, wearing a bikini on the beach, and addressing a room full of people for the first time or doing a photoshoot. A woman’s journey of self-realisation and self-worth was again credited to a man, and this is exactly the kind of narrative we despise. It’s hard to digest that a woman who has been managing everything so well, so tactfully, would need a man (again) to bring enlightenment into her life. Did we not take lessons from Queen? Just curious!
Salma and Meet get intimate, and that’s where the interval happens, leaving us all convinced that from hereon, the movie was not going anywhere. But to our surprise, Single Salma went places post-interval. Could I keep up with it? No.
The film started selling some bizarre ideas that even a technologically challenged person like me would not buy. Apparently, the characters are living in a world where a simple web-search for bikini pictures showed up results of a random woman posing during her honeymoon. This absurd setup is only to show that Salma’s “bikini” look somehow caught the attention of a pervert in Lucknow, making it a flimsy foundation for a revenge-driven subplot.
While we were dealing with that, Sikandar’s character arc was another cherry on the cake, and a very sour cherry, honestly. The man, who we thought was a green flag, which he was, suddenly got reminded of his big male ego when Salma confronted him about the affair. Instead of behaving like a man in his 40s, Sikandar asks the woman to reject him during the wedding rituals. As cringeworthy as it sounds, it’s still better than watching these scenes unfold on the big screen.
What started off as a genuinely good narrative, in no time, it boiled down to becoming a story about a woman having to decide between two equally problematic men, because Meet suddenly realises his love for Salma and rushes to Lucknow to marry her. It’s chaotic but not in a convincing way.
Why are people not acting their age? What is the definition of maturity in this film? How are we okay accepting or even thinking that this would be the right kind of narrative in a world where single woman are living on their terms, abiding by their principles, no matter how many new characters come and go from their lives, and of course, beautifully handling the pressure of marriage too. On that note, the way Salma’s mother convinced her to marry was too melodramatic! Why are female characters still so dependent on the male gaze, and cannot have a journey free from all the ideas that are strictly catered to men?
Single Salma quickly shifted my attention from the film and the performances to these above-mentioned questions. The story is not just stale, it’s also all over the place, and it clumsily tries to piece together the absurd narrative in the end, forcefully make sense of it, to delivery a message on how women should prioritise themselves. This could be said in so many better and sensible ways. But here we are, playing it safe, aren’t we?