In the last two decades, Indian women have seen a lot of positive changes happening that have enabled them to pursue their dreams and get equal opportunities as men in several aspects. However, we have a long way to go before we can say that all women in the country are getting equal opportunities or enough freedom to do what they wish to. While the number of working women in the country today is much higher than what it used to two decades back, a lot of women still end up giving up on their dreams and ambitions to shoulder familiar responsibilities. ‘Sukhee’, a film that has released in the theatres this week and one that features Shilpa Shetty in the titular role, addresses this issue.
Sukhpreet Kalra/Sukhee (Shilpa Shetty) is a homemaker in her early ‘40s based in Anandkot, a small city in Punjab. Sukhee lives with her husband Guru (Chaitannya Choudhry), daughter Jassi (Maahi Raj Jain) and Dadaji (Vinod Nagpal), who is Guru’s grandfather. There was a time when Sukhee was a free-spirited and feisty woman who wanted to live life on her own terms. However, those days are behind her and now, all that Sukhee does is look after the needs of her family members. When the opportunity to attend a reunion and reconnect with her school friends come along, Sukhee gets very excited. However, when she tells Guru about going to Delhi for the reunion for two days, he refuses to let her go. Undeterred by her husband not giving her the ‘permission’ to go and other issues surrounding her life, Sukhee decides to make the trip to Delhi, hoping to get a break from her mundane life.
‘Sukhee’ rests on a very relatable plot. There are countless women in India who would be able to relate to the story of a middle-aged woman who, for a change, wants to do things for herself and engage in things that would make her happy. The problem with Sukhee is that barring the one-line idea, most things don’t work. While the film has some nice, warm moments, they are few and far in between.
The screenplay is filled with scenes that make you cringe or wonder what were the writers thinking while writing them. The writers (Radhika Anand, Paulomi Dutta and Rupinder Inderjit) have made a conscious attempt to let humour be one of the driving forces in the film. Most of the scenes, that are designed to evoke laughter or bring a smile to the audience’s face, do not work. For instance, the scene where Sukhee tells Dadaji that she lies about him suffering from illness to get out of a sticky situation as he could die any moment is in poor taste. Most of the humour is forced into the narrative and does not fit into the overall scheme of things organically.
The film also suffers because of the way the character of Sukhee is written. Though she is shown as a free-spirited person, certain scenes like she whistling at her daughter winning a prize in school is odd. After this scene, when the daughter expresses her annoyance at Sukhee’s behaviour, you cannot help but empathize with the daughter. Sukhee’s love for riding and participating in horse racing is inserted so randomly in the narrative that it sticks out as a sore thumb instead of being one of the highlights in the film. The characterization of Sukhee’s friends, who are supposed to play an integral part in Sukhee rediscovering herself, is very underwhelming.
Shilpa Shetty delivers a very sincere performance as Sukhee. The actress, unfortunately, is saddled with a character that is neither likeable nor memorable. Chaitannya Choudhry has good screen presence and makes the most of the scenes and lines given to him. Amit Sadh registers a mark in a special appearance. Maahi Raj Jain does well as Jassi. Vinod Nagpal stands out in the scenes he appears in. Kusha Kapila, Dilnaz Irani and Pavleen Gujral get under-written characters to play and they do their bit.
‘Sukhee’ rests on a very interesting and relatable idea but the screenplay of the film ensures the film doesn’t land. One hopes somebody makes a better film about homemakers and their lives sometime in the near future.