Think about a scenario where you are conned by a film’s title or the tone of its promotional material. Sometimes filmmakers blatantly resort to a certain visual language to draw more people into cinemas. Ace filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee’s Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, incidentally backed by Bollywood’s massiest movie house, Yash Raj Films, is a bizarre victim of that strategy, which, I would say, turns out to be a blessing in disguise.
I clearly remember the picture that announced the film, where Sandeep (Parineeti Chopra) was planting a peck on Pinky’s (Arjun Kapoor) cheek. It screamed of Bunty Aur Babli vibes, but Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is anything but that. In March 2020, Banerjee’s film teased us with a snazzily cut trailer filled with attitude and elements of what seemed like a slightly more in-your-face black comedy. Then came the thumping Anu Malik song “Faraar” (which is wonderfully used in the film). As a viewer, the least I expected from Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar was speed – something we tend to associate with the act of being faraar (on the run). Sandeep and Pinky, for sure, are on the run, but the run in question is seldom physical. I don’t recall a single scene where the duo is running or in a hurry. Banerjee’s film is intelligent and calculated in its attempt to keep the audience’s mind clocks ticking.
For starters, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is not a black comedy that demands you leave your brains at home. Sandeep, the young honcho of Parivartan Bank, is being chased by her boss via a killer cop, Tyagi (Jaideep Ahlawat). Pinky, a suspended cop, accidentally saves herself and himself from being knocked off in the middle of a highway somewhere on the outskirts of Gurgaon. Left with no choice, the duo flees from Gurgaon towards Nepal. A quick stopover at a fleeting town called Pithoragarh, near the Uttarakhand–Nepal border, is where a good chunk of the story takes place.
If you were amused by the gender-bender in the character names, let me assure you it is not without reason. Sandeep is a pregnant single woman who isn’t particularly apologetic about the absence of a mangal sutra around her neck. Instead, she is a powerful person who is partly bitten by her conscience. Sandeep is brave, headstrong, and fiercely independent. She seems never to have made a roti in her life, much like Bollywood’s male leads who consider the kitchen a woman’s territory. That said, Sandeep isn’t stereotypically. She wears a crisp black-and-white suit, but not without a dash of bright red lipstick as she confronts her boss over a financial fraud they masterminded together.
On the contrary, Pinky has his roti game on point. A man trained to follow orders, he does exactly that when Sandeep aligns her strategy to nail the man who wronged her. Pinky loves to dance, and he even gets what could be termed an item number in a film that throws ample light on patriarchy. He is a man of few words and wants Sandeep to avoid going overboard with her calculated risks. However, the gender quirk is not the sole reason Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar makes for compelling cinema.
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Dibakar Banerjee’s screenplay features profound characterizations. Even in the absence of a family network around the leads, we get a strong sense of their value systems, especially Sandeep’s. Although at loggerheads with her folks, she genuinely wants to help a warm elderly couple (Raghubir Yadav and Neena Gupta) live peacefully in the sunset of their lives. Kapoor’s blow-hot-blow-cold attitude also adds intrigue to what he must want from life. For a minute or two, I wondered how he might have been brought up, which is a triumph for Banerjee as a writer.
As a filmmaker, Banerjee slices right through the typical YRF mystery template to create a tastefully composed dark comedy. One might feel that the pacing is a little off, but this is precisely the languid, lazy speed Banerjee wanted for the sombre runaway drama that Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is. That said, there are a few elements in the screenplay that do not quite fly the way Banerjee’s cinematic moments usually do. A case in point is the rather awkward face-off between Sandeep and the bank manager in Pithoragarh. The character feels oddly designed just to land a major twist. Even the final adventure (where Kapoor does the unthinkable) is less convincing on paper, but it is Banerjee’s directorial command that pulls it off. He also composes the film’s delicate original score, which is a welcome refresher in an era of Hindi films where the cacophony of sounds often makes it impossible to hear the lines.
Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar also cleverly plays to its actors’ strengths. If Arjun Kapoor’s buff physicality is explored well as he plays his part as a bitter Haryanvi cop, Banerjee leaves space for fewer close-ups of the actor. The more expressive Parineeti Chopra, known for performing through her eyes, gets more close-ups and still frames. She is particularly remarkable in a scene that follows an event of sexual abuse. The supporting cast is highly proficient, and the filmmaker knows that with actors like Raghubir Yadav, Neena Gupta, and Jaideep Ahlawat, one needn’t worry about the number of lines they have.
In what must be a major oxymoron, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is a quiet chase film. It throws a plethora of issues our way – politics, gender dynamics, patriarchy, corruption, sexual violence, and class differences – and we are likely to relate to each of them deeply. Despite a few unconvincing stretches in the screenplay, it is easy to see Banerjee’s belief in the story he wants to tell. In the process, he extracts what might be the finest performances of his lead actors’ careers, while giving us a dark comedy with plenty of layers. Lastly, there is no recent film moment that made me chuckle as organically as the final moment of Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar did. It’s classic Dibakar Banerjee.
Rating: ★★★★
Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
