It’s not often that Bollywood celebrates sisterhood. Barring a handful like Aisha, Queen, and Veere Di Wedding, very few films revel in a cast comprising all women — strong but vulnerable, chaotic, contradictory, and even churlish at times.
But Karan Boolani’s latest film Thank You For Coming gets the template right. Starring Bhumi Pednekar, Shehnaaz Gill, Natasha Rastogi, and Dolly Singh, it’s a rousing, vigorous tribute to a genre that’s almost absent in Bollywood.
In an industry where movies mostly show testosterone-driven heroes, the idea of a female star-studded film does not find backers. In an interview with Film Companion, Kajol explained why that happens.
“It has to do with the spending power. Spending power is 99.9 per cent in the man’s hands, and you don’t have that big spending power in the female side of the population,” said the actor.
Moreover, movies in this genre revolve around men and heteronormative romance. Women are pitted against each other—either put on a pedestal or vilified—and are always judged.
Bollywood has had a rich tradition of sex comedies with a male gaze—be it Garam Masala (2005) and No Entry (2005) to The Shaukeens (2014) and the Kya Kool Hain Hum series. Indra Kumar’s Masti franchise is extremely popular. All of these films feature two or more licentious men with a voracious sexual appetite and women as objects of desire, reduced to a sum of body parts. These female characters exist as mere props to the comedic arc or as means to fulfil some form of sexual fantasy.
“It is the hardest genre to get right,” says Boolani. And he would know. Veere Di Wedding, featuring an ensemble cast comprising Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Swara Bhaskar, and Shikha Talsania, was criticised for being classist.
“It is a plastic reaction to the testosterone-fueled cinematic landscape,” wrote movie critic Rahul Desai, while Namrata Joshi likened it to Hollywood’s Sex and the City “transplanted on Indian soil”.
This time, though, Boolani did a lot of listening to women as part of his research. It definitely helped that Rhea Kapoor, who directed Veere Di Wedding, is his wife.
“I spoke to a lot of Rhea’s friends and listened to their experiences. Many were single when we started conceptualising the movie, and they did talk about the pressure of getting married,” says Boolani.
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Reclaiming the genre
What’s most interesting is that Boolani finds the term ‘chick-flick’ — so unproblematically and comfortably used for productions like Sex and the City, Legally Blonde, and Mean Girls — derogatory. By equating women to chickens or fowl, the term assumes a reductionist view of women’s lives and seriously compromises female representation. Under the guise of entertainment for women audiences, they fall prey to the male gaze and reinforce gendered stereotypes.
What’s most interesting is that Boolani finds the term ‘chick-flick’ — so ubiquitously used for productions like Sex and the City, Legally Blonde, and Mean Girls — derogatory. Thank You For Coming is his attempt to reclaim the genre in a new mould.
The script by Radhika Anand and Prashasti Singh is complemented by Boolani’s directorial skill, which never veers into the male gaze. From sex to orgasms to dirty talk—it does not flirt with the male gaze. There are no lingering shots featuring women’s bodies or sexually suggestive heaving and sighing and men taking the lead in bed. Even Kanika’s (Pednekar) solo act in bed is about self-love rather than titillation.
Veere Di Wedding’s most viral sequence was a masturbation scene featuring Bhaskar. Following the incessant trolling and hate, she used the reference in her Twitter (now X) bio for the longest time: “Introduced the vibrator to the Indian silver screen & gave employment for years to come to countless trolls and other vermin.”
Thank You For Coming, too, is about sex and self-discovery. The infamous vibrator makes a special appearance as well. Kanika, who is in her 30s, struggles to accept that the ‘knight in shining armour’ or ‘fairytale wedding’ trope is unrealistic. Her friends, the happily married Pallavi (Dolly Singh) and divorced single mother Tina (Shibani Bedi) step in. They help her navigate life as a single woman in Delhi. A female actor playing an older character with a sexual appetite is still new in Bollywood, where age, unless it is a number under 29, is a dirty word for women.
Kanika’s journey in the film is significant because it highlights how taboos and shaming are sowed and relentlessly reinforced in schools. Oh My God 2 (2023) finally spoke about the importance of sex education, which is still a no-go area for schools and families in India.
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Irony is lost on us
Sonam Kapoor’s Aisha (2010), inspired by Jane Austen’s novel Emma, was one of the first women-centric films in Bollywood.
And since then, the Kapoors — Sonam, Rhea, and their father Anil — have almost become the default custodians of the genre.
Vikas Bahl’s Queen, though, stood out for its portrayal of a middle-class Delhi girl’s journey in self-realisation. Rani (Kangana Ranaut) goes on a path of self-discovery when her wedding is called off by her fiance. One of the movie’s best arcs is the sisterhood shared between the outgoing, confident Vijayalakshmi (Lisa Haydon) and the timid, underconfident Rani. Neither judge the other for their respective outlook toward life.
A consistent criticism of women-centric movies in Bollywood is about the women’s obsession with marriage. The irony is mostly lost on the critics because India thrives on a ‘happily ever after’ idea. Even dating apps have not squelched the marriage quest or pressure on anyone, least of all women.
“No matter how much you are told about the pressure of being married, it just does not register, because you really do not know exactly how that feels,” says Boolani. In a way, he wants to address that in Thank You For Coming. But most of all, he wants people to just have a blast watching it.
Everything else is just foreplay.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)