Why Are Women Storming The Box Office?
Jaya is brought up in a family where her younger brother and his choices are respected while her needs are always brushed aside. Her father and maternal uncles take all her decisions including to enrol her in a college for a course she doesn’t want to study. She unsuccessfully tries to rebel against her parents by romancing an elderly, outwardly progressive and feminist college lecturer. Her family pulls her out of college and marries her off to an uneducated, poultry farm owner who seems normal but is aggressive and short tempered with little regard to others. He is physically abusive and superficially apologetic in turns, slapping her one morning and then taking her to a movie and dinner that night.
Rebuffed by everyone to accept her fate, she decides to take matters into her own hands and fights for her freedom and dignity in what becomes a quirky tale of poetic justice. The Malayalam film Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya He with wonderful portrayals of the couple played by Darshana Rajendran and Basil Joseph (the director of Malayalam super hero hit, Minal Murali) cracked the box office with nearly INR 50cr in collections.
A sombre film bringing forth the issue of domestic abuse would have normally been considered arthouse. But the phenomenal box office performance of Jaya Jaya Jaye Jaya He makes it strikingly mainstream and commercial cinema.
This doesn’t seem to be restricted to the realistic Malayalam films that people have taken a liking to in the post pandemic years, but to films across languages and seems to be growing into a global trend.
Evelyn Quan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat. Her life is in utter chaos. On the one side, her husband is serving her divorce, while on the other, her strained relationship with her daughter just gets worse as the young girl brings home her non-Chinese girlfriend to announce her lesbian relationship. Meanwhile, Evelyn’s stern and demanding father decides to visit her for the Chinese New Year weekend that’s coming up. Adding to her already chaotic life, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) serves her a notice for tax evasion on her laundromats income.
Not only did Michelle Yeoh’s performance as Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All At Once get her an Oscar, but made it the most awarded film of all time. The film uses frenzied action sequences to present a woman’s bittersweet tale with a mix of fantasy, surreal comedy, science fiction, martial arts and animation. The film has become the highest grossing film for Studio A24 and returned a tidy profit at the box office.
Early this week, Barbie hit the coveted one-billion-dollar mark at the global box office. While it has made Greta Gerwig the first billion-dollar woman film director, what surprised everyone is the speed at which it did it. Releasing simultaneously with Nolan’s Oppenheimer, it topped her previous film Little Woman’s collections by four times. The clever and inventive screenplay takes us from the utopian matriarchical society of Barbie to the patriarchal real world highlighting themes of feminism and the true value of being a woman, beyond just beauty and political correctness. Pushing the very boundaries Barbiedom as young girls, who have ever owned one, know it.
What explains the unprecedented box office success of these films, considering that neither Barbie not Evelyn are Wonder Woman with superpowers?
Meanwhile in Maharashtra it’s not Barbie, but a small budget Marathi film called Bai Pan Bhari Deva that has raked in over INR 90 cr at the box office, that is the rage in town. The film tells the heartwarming story of six estranged middle-aged sisters who decide to come together for a tournament even as they grapple with the challenges and frustrations of their daily lives. Headlined by the Rohini Hattangadi, the cast includes Marathi TV actresses, none of whom would qualify as a box office draw.
It has, however, already broken many records including becoming the second highest grossing Marathi film, recording the highest collections for a single day, and beating some of the bigger Hindi films released at the same time. In its fourth week now, you won’t just see Marathi women watching this film at the theatres, but Gujarati and other North-Indian women too, all of them sporting the ray-bans worn by the sisters in the movie and all of them dancing together for a selfie with the poster of the actors in the theatre. The films effort to highlight the plight of housewives in society today seems to have connected across cultures and grown into a phenomenon.
A similar Marathi film called Jhimma, released a year ago, about a group of seven urban women from different socio-cultural backgrounds who embark on a journey of selfdiscovery cracked the box office and picked up a few awards. Coming right at the end of the pandemic during which women were forced to yield their home turf to family members who were all working from home, and who were experimenting with Dalgano coffee and other culinary skills, the film seems to have provided an escape to women from the drudgery of household work. Many women’s groups took trips to London together after the movie, creating a sort of cult movement, enough for the producers to work on a sequel. Across regional cinema, there seems to be emerging a pattern of women centric films working very well at the box office in 2023 as is evident from the numbers.
Jaya is brought up in a family where her younger brother and his choices are respected while her needs are always brushed aside. Her father and maternal uncles take all her decisions including to enrol her in a college for a course she doesn’t want to study. She unsuccessfully tries to rebel against her parents by romancing an elderly, outwardly progressive and feminist college lecturer. Her family pulls her out of college and marries her off to an uneducated, poultry farm owner who seems normal but is aggressive and short tempered with little regard to others. He is physically abusive and superficially apologetic in turns, slapping her one morning and then taking her to a movie and dinner that night. Rebuffed by everyone to accept her fate, she decides to take matters into her own hands and fights for her freedom and dignity in what becomes a quirky tale of poetic justice. The Malayalam film Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya He with wonderful portrayals of the couple played by Darshana Rajendran and Basil Joseph (the director of Malayalam super hero hit, Minal Murali) cracked the box office with nearly INR 50cr in collections.
A sombre film bringing forth the issue of domestic abuse would have normally been considered arthouse. But the phenomenal box office performance of Jaya Jaya Jaye Jaya He makes it strikingly mainstream and commercial cinema.
This doesn’t seem to be restricted to the realistic Malayalam films that people have taken a liking to in the post pandemic years, but to films across languages and seems to be growing into a global trend.
Evelyn Quan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat. Her life is in utter chaos. On the one side, her husband is serving her divorce, while on the other, her strained relationship with her daughter just gets worse as the young girl brings home her non-Chinese girlfriend to announce her lesbian relationship. Meanwhile, Evelyn’s stern and demanding father decides to visit her for the Chinese New Year weekend that’s coming up. Adding to her already chaotic life, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) serves her a notice for tax evasion on her laundromats income.
Not only did Michelle Yeoh’s performance as Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All At Once get her an Oscar, but made it the most awarded film of all time. The film uses frenzied action sequences to present a woman’s bittersweet tale with a mix of fantasy, surreal comedy, science fiction, martial arts and animation. The film has become the highest grossing film for Studio A24 and returned a tidy profit at the box office.
Early this week, Barbie hit the coveted one-billion-dollar mark at the global box office. While it has made Greta Gerwig the first billion-dollar woman film director, what surprised everyone is the speed at which it did it. Releasing simultaneously with Nolan’s Oppenheimer, it topped her previous film Little Woman’s collections by four times. The clever and inventive screenplay takes us from the utopian matriarchical society of Barbie to the patriarchal real world highlighting themes of feminism and the true value of being a woman, beyond just beauty and political correctness. Pushing the very boundaries Barbiedom as young girls, who have ever owned one, know it.
What explains the unprecedented box office success of these films, considering that neither Barbie not Evelyn are Wonder Woman with superpowers?
Meanwhile in Maharashtra it’s not Barbie, but a small budget Marathi film called Bai Pan Bhari Deva that has raked in over INR 90 cr at the box office, that is the rage in town. The film tells the heartwarming story of six estranged middle-aged sisters who decide to come together for a tournament even as they grapple with the challenges and frustrations of their daily lives. Headlined by the Rohini Hattangadi, the cast includes Marathi TV actresses, none of whom would qualify as a box office draw.
It has, however, already broken many records including becoming the second highest grossing Marathi film, recording the highest collections for a single day, and beating some of the bigger Hindi films released at the same time. In its fourth week now, you won’t just see Marathi women watching this film at the theatres, but Gujarati and other North-Indian women too, all of them sporting the ray-bans worn by the sisters in the movie and all of them dancing together for a selfie with the poster of the actors in the theatre. The films effort to highlight the plight of housewives in society today seems to have connected across cultures and grown into a phenomenon.
A similar Marathi film called Jhimma, released a year ago, about a group of seven urban women from different socio-cultural backgrounds who embark on a journey of self-discovery cracked the box office and picked up a few awards. Coming right at the end of the pandemic during which women were forced to yield their home turf to family members who were all working from home, and who were experimenting with Dalgano coffee and other culinary skills, the film seems to have provided an escape to women from the drudgery of household work. Many women’s groups took trips to London together after the movie, creating a sort of cult movement, enough for the producers to work on a sequel. Across regional cinema, there seems to be emerging a pattern of women centric films working very well at the box office in 2023 as is evident from the numbers.
Ace director Priyadarshan, known for his outstanding comedies, in his typical comic style delivers the Tamil film Appattha, starring Urvashi (in her 700th film) as a grandmother who is stereotypically shunned by her urbanised son and his family for her rural behaviour. So much so that her son mindlessly makes her the caretaker of his house and their dog when he takes his family out on a holiday. The tale of the old woman and a dog turns out to be at once funny and ironic in Priyadarshan’s deft hands, ending with a heart wrenching triumph against all odds and an exposition on motherhood. The film premiered at film festivals and debuted directly on OTT to rave reviews. It is difficult to imagine anyone bankrolling such a slice-of-life film starring an actress past her prime as a solo heroine of the film.
New women-only cinema audiences
Is there is a new ‘women in the theatre’ audience segment emerging post the pandemic? At a screening of the Punjabi film Kali Jota (Mar 2023) in its fourth week in Chandigarh, I noticed that the hall had nearly 50 per cent occupancy almost all of them were women. The film shows the brave fightback by women teachers silently facing patriarchal abuse in schools. Could it be that this ‘women theatre going’ audience segment is now emerging as a significant demographic? An audience that doesn’t want to watch high-octane action or grimy thrillers or superhero films which are releasing in large numbers due to the need for a ‘cinematic spectacle’ in an attempt to get audiences back to the theatre post the pandemic?
Gangubhai Kathiawadi, the Sanjay Leela Bhansali spectacle, tells the tale of a girl forced into prostitution and how she works the system to control it. The film grossed over INR 200cr at the box office and won numerous awards, besides being credited as the movie that revived theatrical business post covid bringing audiences back to the cinemas. In contrast, forty years ago, in 1983, when Shyam Benegal made Mandi, based on a similar theme with star studded, stellar award-winning actors, the film didn’t set the box office on fire and barely won an award for Art Direction.
Audiences seem to have come a long way in terms of accepting films about women empowerment and wanting to see her point of view.
Marketing strategies are also being worked around with special screenings and reach outs at housing societies to get women audiences to come to the theatre. For Bai Ban Bhari Deva, the producers had organized a special screening for over 800 women at the Plaza cinema in Dadar, the heart of Marathi speaking population.
For the National Award winning Marathi film Paithani(2022), they had special screenings at girls schools all over Maharashtra.
Ripping Through Patriarchy
Nimisha, a well-educated girl with a passion for dance, returns from Bahrain and marries upright school teacher Suraj and arrives at her husband’s home in Kerala. She soon gets into her daily grind as she cooks all the meals, washes all dishes, dusts the furniture, cleans bathrooms and does everyone’s laundry and is even expected to place slippers at her father in law’s feet everyday as he steps out of the house. She eats after everyone else has eaten and cleans up after. She subdues her dignity when she has to sleep on the floor in isolation during her periods. Her husband is condescending when she complains of pains during sex and seeks a little foreplay. Eventually, she gives up on her struggles to be the submissive housewife her husband expects her to be and throws murky kitchen sink water on him and leaves. The Great Indian Kitchen rips through patriarchy as you recoil in horror watching the plight of a married woman in this stark everyday tale of unsung slavery and gender inequality. The characters in the film don’t have any names, implying it to be every household’s story. Coming right in the middle of the pandemic, there were no takers for this hard hitting movie till a new streaming platform, Neestream, bought it. As viewers lapped up the film in large numbers, the servers of the platform crashed and it took days for it to be restored back. The film touched a cord and won much critical acclaim for its sensitive portrayal of misogyny and domestic labour.
In late July, Bollywood hit the bullseye at the box office with Rocky aur Rani ki prem kahani crossing INR 200cr in a little less than two weeks of its worldwide release. A light, colourful and entertaining film, it has all the tropes of a typical Karan Johar film but is loaded with multiple socio-cultural messages and attempts at redrawing patriarchal lines. Presented in a typical masala movie format(aka full of dance, drama and music), the film subtly addresses deep-rooted women-centric issues such as gender bias, misogyny, body shaming and patriarchy bringing out both sides of the argument. The cleverly written screenplay delivers home all the messages laced with humour and without sounding preachy. There is even an attempt to bring to the fore the new wokeness and the cancel culture in the society.
Quite bold and daring on Karan Johar’s part to make a commercial movie about these subjects and bet a big budget on it. Since theatrical audiences have largely been male, films with such themes would have been considered arthouse.
Go girl, love yourself
The Tamil web series Sweet Kaaram Coffee pushes the boundaries of the socially acceptable behaviour by making a mother, her daughter and her mother-in-law stealthily leave home in the wee hours of the morning and embark on a road trip of self-discovery leaving behind her husband and son to fend for themselves at home. Roja girl (Madhoo) makes her web series debut along with feisty Lakshmi as they embark on this road trip questioning patriarchy, societal norms and occasionally pushing the limits of believability in the story. During the course of this trip these women mend fences, heal wounds, fall in love with themselves, combat their worst fears and celebrate life.
A sweet little Gujarati film called Kutch Express helmed by Viral Shah, based on a screenplay has been written by Rahul Malick, Karan Bhanushali and Viraf Patel released in early 2023. Starring noted mainstream Hindi actress Ratna Pathak Shah as the mother in law, the story, written and directed by four men, tells the tribulations of an ordinary housewife as she frantically tries to save her marriage after she learns about her husband’s extra marital affair with a sexy colleague.
The film ends dramatically with the wife deciding to leave the husband and head into a new city for a new life, egged on by strangers. With a climactic train sequence reminiscent of SRK’s famous Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge scene, the film has done well at the Gujarati box office and streams on a Gujarati OTT platform.
Rebels with a Cause
The dark Hindi comedy Darlings(2022) written, directed and produced by an all women debutant crew received very positive reviews and over 10 million watching hours globally in its opening weekend, the highest for any non-English original Indian film on Netflix. The story of an alcoholic who regularly beats his wife and the revenge she exacts on him became heavily discussed for the terrific performances of Alia Bhatt and Vijay Verma.
Right upto the 1990s, women in Punjab were not allowed to accompany men to baraats and participate in the noisy dancing and singing part of the boisterous Punjabi wedding celebrations. Even the grooms mother was not allowed to attend the pheras. In Punjabi film Gode Gode Cha (2023) Rani played feistily by Sonam Bajwa builds a team of women and fights for her rights and ends this age old ritual. The film went onto become one of the most loved Punjabi films of 2023 and clocked over INR 20cr at the box office, 4 times its production budget.
Ritabhari Chakrabarthy stars in Bengali film Fatafeti (2023) that delighted audiences as she portrays a girl who turns from being a fat shamed, unable-to-conceive wife of her handsome husband (played with much caring subtlety by Abir) and who converts her passion for tailoring into a fashion brand. She received critical acclaim for her portrayal and if the box office numbers are to go by, it was quite a commercial success.
Post pandemic Hindi films Sherni, Thappad and Kathal all present the boundaries of what is no longer acceptable to women and how they would go about achieving what they wanted in spite of the patriarchy around them. The films have been much appreciated, watched, debated and discussed.
For Women, Of Women, By Women
Forgotten Bollywood female actors have made a thundering comeback on the streaming platforms. Women now headline more than 50% of shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Sushmita Sen, Raveena Tandon, Kajol, Sonakshi Sinha, Juhi Chawla, Karishma Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Madhoo, Madhuri Dixit, Samantha, Nayantara and Tammannah Bhatia all have multiple shows with them in the lead, getting a newer audience to showcase their acting prowess to.
While there have been a handful of women directors in films, many more have broken the glass ceiling as their web series and films gain greater acceptance for the new stories they are wanting to tell. The series, Four More Shots Please, with edgy content targeted at the very urban women, is now into its fourth season.
Whether it is a woke audience or financially independent women who can watch movies at the theatres by themselves, women oriented stories seem to be bringing in more revenues and subscribers. What was started a decade back as a once-in-a-while trickle by films like Queen(2013) and English Vinglish(2012) which told stories of woman empowerment packaged with a lot of entertainment, now seems to have become a flood at the box office in films across languages in 2023.
Whether this is a post-pandemic phenomenon or a fad that will fade away remains to be seen but it’s surely filling up the box office cash registers like never before. Successful films now seem to have women at the back of the camera, in front of it and on the seats in the theatre!
More power to them!
Naveen Chandra runs 91 Film Studios which produces regional language feature films.
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