Film Review : Guptagamini (2019) by Lakshmi Raj Shetty

“Guptagamini” is a very troubling film not mainly because of the content, which is an extremely twisted view of the world and a society-devoid of any nuances, but because of the treatment and aesthetics. The film starts with a voice-over preaching of sorts that tries to define what a woman's life is like – the misgivings of being a woman without a man in this world. The rest of the film, about two and a half hours is simply a badly directed performance that goes on to support this hypothesis. Its manner of execution is similar to a soft-porn film without the kind of exposure, however, where the filmmaker succeeds is in making the viewer complicit in the act of voyeurism that the film tries to peddle along.

My experience with Kannada films so far has shown that almost all of them are made for a theatrical release, which explains the duration this short story has been dragged to. The film could very well end after the beginning voice-over since the meat of the story is revealed, but it doesn't, and therefore it continues with lousy cinematography, almost no sense of art-direction, performances that seem to be pushed out of unassuming actors who are not sure what kind of film they are in. “Guptagamini” also makes an excessive use of background music that makes the already poor audio (dialogues and ambience) sometimes inaudible. While all of these could have been used by a better craftswoman or man into a tolerable, perhaps useful story to tell, “Guptagamini” simply feels like one disastrous scene after another.

Within all of these, the core of the film gets lost somewhere early on and what follows is a mere exhibition of failed people, failing further. The film then tries to dress itself up as a social commentary and re-stress upon social dynamics driven by gender based status quo – making the vital point that if only women stay in the ascribed hierarchy, they will have a better life. It further complicates its own position by introducing all the male characters in the film as sex-hungry bastards who would exploit women one way or another and our protagonist seems to be an eternally stupid woman to fall into one trap after another. The only man in the film who does not take advantage of her is an apathetic listener to whom she is narrating her story, and he simply confirms the status quo by looking at the woman as if ‘I told you so.. this is what happens.. how could you not understand these simple things'.

The story has three moments when the protagonist actually tries to take some agency of her life via taking up jobs or starting businesses. However the film is not interested in those at all and moves quickly to the point when she is again exploited; perhaps the filmmaker is not interested in those trivial pursuits and would rather have the protagonist make money in exchange of sex sometimes dressed as love and infatuation and other times simply put as that. This to my mind is the single, biggest trouble of the film and makes me want to hate it.

“Guptagamini” raises serious concerns about filmmaking in Kannada. If you were to consider this for a theatrical release, what audiences is it meant for? The political conservativeness of Karnataka in India makes it a rather interesting film, is it to simply reinforce the gender hierarchy and provide fuel to the already oppressing men and women who want to keep the status quo as such? If you consider the film for a festival, what does this sort of representation of women and society do to the people? The absolute lack of any reflection within the film makes it seem convoluted and not amateur. If one was to consider this as an amateur exploration of social dynamics, as a personal film, then it reveals the ugly, almost demonic face of the filmmaker. The only way to forgive is to consider this as a terrible mistake that a filmmaker commits in their early careers and in the naivety of not having understood what the medium is about in the first place. In which case, the filmmaker should hide this film as far into darkness and pray that it does not surface anywhere anytime.