Khujli: Neena-Jackie Tell Us It’s Okay To Be Be Kinky At 60

Starring: Neena Gupta, Jackie Shroff

Directed by: Sonam Nair

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Stilted dialogues and  an exaggerated perception of middleclass bravado do not take from the sheer pleasure of watching  Jackie Shroff and Neena Gupta come together for the first time as a aging, though far from fading, couple trying out new sex positions for the first time in their compatible togetherness.

It all happens in a flash after the huffing and wheezing Shroff discovers a  pair of sexy handcuffs in his son’s room.

“Do you even have an idea what he must be  doing with it?” he fumes, red-faced and frazzled.

Turns out wifey Neena Gupta knows all about  S & M. She has been reading 50 Shades Of Grey in her ‘me’ time and picking up helpful  but useless hints for an ‘us’ time that never happens.

“Aap toh….bass…” she sniggers at her aghast husband.

The parodic premise of a husband suddenly discovering layers of sexual repression in a wife who suddenly wants to experiment in the bedroom could have been interesting. In India we presume that parents of grownup children  prefer to lead sexless lives.Khujli thinks giggling and bantering is all one  needs to make the couple’s pleasurable new pilgrimage look powered and exciting.

Shroff is a bit clumsy doing the clumsy act, maybe because he has never comfortable with intimacy on screen even in his heydays. But Gupta lets herself go with unabashed abandon. It is their combined post-menopause effervescence that furnishes the somewhat unfinished film with  some kind  of a closure.

Much of their playacting in the secrecy of their bedroom looks improvised, and not in a very inspired away. I mean , how far can you stretch a joke about a husband playing Gabbar and wife playing Basanti?Nonetheless just watching the lead pair have fun with the rather meatless material  is a pleasure.

The film begins and ends with  the creaking of a bed and pleasurable sounds from the couple.

We get it.