Margarita with a Straw is a 2014 Indian drama film directed by Shonali Bose. It stars Kalki Koechlin as Laila, a teenager with cerebral palsy who moves from New Delhi to Greenwich village for higher education and comes of age following her complex relationship with a blind girl. Produced by Bose with assistance from Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the film was one of the five projects selected for the Work In Progress Lab of Film Bazaar 2013. Margarita with a Straw had Revathy, Sayani Gupta, and William Moseley play supporting roles.
The film made its world premiere on 8 September 2014 as part of the Contemporary World Cinema Programme at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It went on to be screened at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, BFI London Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) and Istanbul Film Festival. It was released in India on 17 April 2015.
Video Margarita with a Straw
Plot
Laila (Koechlin) is a teenager with cerebral palsy. She is a student at Delhi University and an aspiring writer. She writes lyrics and creates electronic sounds for a indie band at the university. Laila develops feelings for the lead singer but is heartbroken when she is rejected. She is later overwhelmed on receiving a scholarship for a semester at New York University. She moves to Manhattan with her traditional Maharashtrian mother Shubhangini (Revathi) despite her father's reluctance.
Laila meets an attractive young man named Jared (Moseley) in her creative writing class, who is assigned to help her. She also meets a young activist Khanum (Gupta), a blind girl of a Pakistani Bangladeshi descent, whom she later falls in love with. Laila is confused about her sexual orientation as she is attracted to men, Jared in particular, while being in a serious relationship with Khanum. She has sex with Jared on one occasion, only to regret it immediately. However, she doesn't tell Khanum about it. Oblivious to her daughter's relationship with Khanum, Laila's mother invites her to Delhi to spend the winter vacation with the family.
Laila ultimately finds the courage to tell her mother about her sexuality and her relationship with Khanum, which her mother strongly disapproves of. She also tells Khanum that she had sex with Jared and asks for her forgiveness. However, having felt betrayed by Laila, Khanum breaks up with her and leaves for New York. Laila's mother is diagnosed with advanced colon cancer which has relapsed after previous treatments. Laila and her mother move pass their differences as the former tends to her while she is at the hospital. The two eventually reconcile shortly before Shubhangini's death. Laila plays a recorded speech at her funeral telling how much she loved her and how she was the only one who ever understood her. Laila is later seen enjoying an outdoor date, all by herself.
Maps Margarita with a Straw
Cast
- Kalki Koechlin as Laila
- Revathi as Shubhangini Damle
- Sayani Gupta as Khanum
- Kuljeet Singh as Laila's father
- Hussain Dalal
- William Moseley as Jared
- Malhar Khushu as Monu
- Jacob Berger
- Tenzin Dalha
- Shuchi Dwivedi as Sameera
- Maninder Chauhan as Dhruv's mother in law
Production
Bose began working on the story in January 2011, on her son's seventeenth birthday, whom she had lost a year ago. She worked on the first draft extensively for about a month. Although the main character of Laila is based on her cousin Malini Chib, a disability rights activist, the narrative follows closely Bose's own experience of losing a family member. She acknowledged the difficulty of incorporating her personal story into a screenplay for a feature film calling it a "tough emotional journey". The idea of working on a film about disability was conceived during a casual conversation between Bose and her aunt (Chib's mother), who wanted the former to work on a similar project aimed at creating awareness regarding the subject. Having grown up with Chib in the same household, she was familiar with the discrimination faced by people with disabilities. She was especially intrigued by the general ignorance exhibited towards the sexuality of people with disabilities, and therefore decided to incorporate the same into the narrative.
Bose completed the film's original draft all by herself, and later adapted it into feature film-length script with co-writer Nilesh Maniyar. The script went on to win the Sundance Mahindra Global Filmmaker Award in 2012, and as a part of the prize, the duo was awarded mentorship from the Sundance Institute staff and creative advisors, and participation in a Feature Film Program Lab, which is where Bose decided to modify the story. After being told by the advisory board that she was "not in the skin of the character", Bose decided to rewrite the script from her own perspective, as opposed to earlier when she was trying to incorporate Chib's point of view. She said that is was only after the incident that she incorporated-albeit unconsciously, her experiences as a bisexual woman in India into the narrative. Bose and Maniyar worked for two years on the script as it went through over fourty revisions before materialising into the final screenplay.
Bose originally intended to cast actors with the same disabilities as the characters of Laila and Khanum, her blind lover. Since there were no actresses with cerebral palsy in India, she decided to audition for the role in institutions that catered to patients, but was unable to come up with desirable results. Bose also had a meeting with a blind actress in her early thirties to discuss the role of Khanum, a character she associated herself with. However, she was uncomfortable with the sexual content of the script and ultimately decided against pursuing the role. She helped Bose in training Sayani Gupta, who was eventually cast as Khanum.
When she first decided to cast a professional, Bose approached Koechlin, who she said was her "first and only choice" the role. The latter was shooting for Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewaani. Due to the clashing schedule Bose went on to audition other actresses to substitute Koechlin, but felt that "something was missing" in each one. She eventually decided to push the filming for three months to accommodate her. Koechlin admitted to the role being the most challenging of her film career, and she took six months off her filming schedule to prepare for it. She underwent a six-week training workshop with actor Adil Hussain. The workshop aimed at making her "body language seem natural", while also focusing on the speech pattern of patients with cerebral palsy. Koechlin spent considerable time with Chib and her physiotherapist and speech therapist. She also attended a month-long workshop in Delhi, where she worked on the movement of the body parts. Although the film covers aspects of physical disability, Koechlin dubbed it "a romcom within some hurdles". Bose too described the film as a coming-of-age story about a "woman's journey of finding love".
Maniyar, who also served as the casting director for the film contacted Gupta for the role of Khanum while she was working on the travel show Yeh Hai India Meri Jaan. Immediately drawn to the character, Gupta agreed to audition and was ultimately cast for the role after a lengthy selection process that lasted for about a month. She said in a later interview that she had felt fortunate to have bagged the character of Khanum. To prepare for the role, Gupta took up such exercises as staying blindfolded while doing daily activities as cooking and bathing. She also attented classes at the National Association for the Blind and learnt basic braille, and spent time with a special voice and accent trainer. Revathi, who had previously played a mother to a young child with cerebral palsy in Mani Rathnam's Anjali (1990) agreed to play Laila's mother after reading the film's script. Willaim Moseley was cast as Jared, a British student in Laila's class who develops a friendship with her.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Margarita With a Straw was composed by music directer and singer Mickey McCleary with Joi Barua serving as the guest composer for the song "Dusokute". The lyrics fro the album were written by Prasoon Joshi primarily, with the exception of the track "I Need a Man" which featured English lyrics written by McCleary.
Release
Marketing and release
Margarita with a Straw premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, and was also screened at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, 19th Busan International Film Festival, and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Box office
Margarita with a Straw collected a total of INR74 million during its theatrical run.
Critical Reception
The film garnered positive reviews, and Koechlin widespread attention and universal acclaim for her portrayal of a disabled person. While Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter made a detailed note of her "bravura performance in both physical and emotional terms", NDTV film critic Saibal Chatterjee straightforwardly deemed her "absolutely brilliant". Firstpost's Deepanjana Pal ascribed her screen appeal to her lack of acting pretense, and wrote "[Koechlin] has done a good job of miming the physicality [...] but what is truly remarkable is the lack of artifice in her expressions". John Beifuss compared her performance to Eddie Redmayne's act as Stephen Hawking in the biographical drama, The Theory of Everything, in his review for The Commercial Appeal. He gave Koechlin the highest praise writing that her performance would have attracted Academy Award notice in a major film studio production. The view was echoed by Variety critic Guy Lodge, who was particularly impressed by her range. Film critic Subhash K. Jha wrote in 5 out of 5 star review, "This is a moving heartwarming lyrical and yummy tale of a girl so sassy, she defines the eternal quest to seize the day." He was appreciative of the "delicate tastes of life" in the film.
Awards
The film won the NETPAC award World or International Asian Film Premiere at 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It was the only Indian film to win an award at TIFF that year. At the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival held in Estonia in 2014, the film won the Audience Award and the Youth Jury Award at Vesoul Film Festival in France in 2015.| It won the the Best Composer Award at the 2015 Asian Film Awards.
Koechlin won several accolades for the film, including the Best Actress Award at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the Screen Award for Best Actress, and the Jury Award at the 63rd National Film Awards. Additionally, she had garnered nominations for Best Actress at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Asian Film Awards.
References
External links
- Margarita with a Straw on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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