Movie: Queen
Director: Vikas Bahl
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Rajkummar Rao, Lisa Haydon, Vinay Singh
Rating: ****
Kangana Ranaut’s casting as a ‘considered-safe’, conservative Delhi girl in Queen is undoubtedly the biggest achievement of the makers. Not only does she look perfectly believable with her urbanised Hindi textured with loveable strokes of broken English, she also gives every space that her character needs to breathe free off her constrained past. She plays Rani,a girl who’s starved of oxygen in her life, never quite having an identity of her own, landing up at a yes at everything she has asked to do. If there would be something that the actress needs to have proved to the audiences in terms of her acting capabilities, Queen provides all the answers and necessarily fills that void, given that she owns every frame of her act.
The movie manages to weave around itself a delectable charm which lies in its coming-of-age motif, even if it’s certainly an idea that has been done-to-death. To prove you, there is a disturbed girl who’s in need of a break. There are free-spirited, individualistic souls by her side. In addition, there’s also the self-pleasing act she performs by giving little regard to taboos or preconceptions. The film visually captures the soul beneath her every need to unlearn life. An ending is just a poetic one for this tale as she doesn’t desire anything but her identity and finds that through her journeys, the diverse environments she is a part of.
Going to her honeymoon alone blaming a broken marriage is just an excuse she wants to give. She knows that she is trapped inside and needs to come out of her self-inflicted shell. She has a life for herself and craves to live it to the fullest, just that the deepest of her desires just wanted a name for themselves in the form of a rejuvenating trip. It’s literally the open-minded facet of Rani that’s nurtured so subtly as she comes to terms with an ever-hooked up hotel server, a pole-dancer, goes on to share a room with three men of variant backdrops and kisses a stranger like a piece of cake. A glass of beer is no more the unwanted object of wrongness for her. She wittily utters once, “A neighbor of mine died of cancer without ever consuming a cigar or a drink in his entire life. I better die having both.â€� Not that her alcoholic intentions are glorified here, but the real point is that she dances hard, accepts truths and overcomes all her fears one after one gradually. She has an improved fashion sense, smiles more and gets a sense of accomplishment when her expedition ends. It’s all that you want ultimately as a viewer for a character whom you really cared and root for has her purpose served. The innocence is still there, but she knows the world now.
It wouldn’t be injustice to call Queen, an English Vinglish and Rani, a possible Shashi, as they tread similar paths in a quest to attain some self-respect and give existence, another deserving second chance. Their simplicity warms you inside and the resemblances only signify the impact they have on a spectator beyond a viewing. There are several other aspects that the film depicts with regard to a man-woman bond, cultural inhibitions being no barrier for new-friendships and firm utterance of a ‘no’ when the situation arises.
Amsterdam and France get all tourist-friendly visuals for themselves for an effort that doesn’t make the mistake of subtitling its French lines and instead make them flow seamlessly with the tale. There’s once again the issue of pace but for a matter of fact, the director Vikas Bahl gives everything that the story needs, quality cinematography, timely emotion sans melodrama in its 146 minute running time. The music empathizes with the soul of the film and boasts of a rich mix of genres. Raj Kumar Yadav, Lisa Haydon are terrific in their appearances and contribute the needful to their parts but its the underdog, Kangana Ranaut who wins hearts. Go, party with this Queen ! Ditching your past was never more fun!
Review by Srivathsan N, who had originally written it for Cinegoer.net
