Sushmita Sen Makes A Comeback After 10 Years!

When was the  last time we had  the  pleasure of seeing   the svelte  Sushmita Sen? No,  not  on  social media where she  posts pictures working out  with a  man with whom her  relationship is…well…finally working  out. And  good  luck to  that relationship.

In Hindi cinema she  was  last seen ten years ago  in  Anees Bazmi’s  No Problem  which contrary to its title, was  extremely problematic  for Ms Sen. Playing the prop doesn’t suit her.  She looked like  a fish  out of water  in  No Problem. Ridiculously  inapt.

 For  the  next ten  years she was seen only in one Bengali film Srijit  Mukherjee’s  Nirbaak  where she  was  very at home and  effective. She  spoke Bengali as fluently as Rituparno Ghosh.

In the  trailer  of   her   comeback vehicle Aarya  for  the  OTT platform(on Hotstar-Disney)   Sushmita Sen looks smashingly  .And she is very much at home playing the  hero of  the crime drama. That’s  because  director  Ram Madhvani  knows she can’t be cast as a prop. Whenever she is  put  in a film as  a decorative  doll she looks completely artificial .

Aarya  casts  Sushmita as a wife and mother who discovers ugly dark criminal secrets about her husband(Chandrachur Singh) .The narrative struck me as highly formulistic: happy family disrupted by  gun shots,  we  know  the rest. The wife taking over her husband’s shady business can be traced to the  recent Hollywood film Widows. Except that Widows didn’t  focus on so many  immaculate  close-ups of Viola Davis’ bereaved face.

 Aarya is  a  powerful showcase   for  Ms  Sen  in a series that seems gripping and   designed to spotlight  her  powerful no-nonsense personality.   The male characters, for a change,  look like props, largely unaesthetic  decorative embellishments.

We are  told  Ms Sen  plays   a woman who will  go to any lengths to protect  her  family.Glad to hear that. But this  manoeuvre  seems her  one last ditch effort to protect her  career .Family be damned. And  best of luck to that.