Almost every single person I have interviewed this year, and there have been roughly 30 of them, counts 'Laapataa Ladies' as their favourite film of the year. The film, directed by Kiran Rao, is India’s entry for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, and much of the campaigning to bring home the Oscar has just begun.
Rao’s film, her return to filmmaking after over a decade, is a delightful tale of two veiled brides who get mistakenly swapped in a crowded train compartment, and all that ensues thereafter. Without a doubt, it is a comment on women in veils, but told with such endearing sweetness and optimism, and a dash of dramatic irony, that one can help but be bowled over.
What Rao didn’t expect is that she has opened a delicious cookie jar for an army of Hindi films which are led by women characters, and these have comprised 2024’s big successes.
'Laapataa Ladies' was made on a humble budget of around Rs 4 crore, but went on to garner Rs 25 crores worldwide, and a dream Oscar entry. Rhea Kapoor’s 'Crew' is another success story. A laugh-out-loud heist starring Tabu, Kareena Kapoor, and Kriti Sanon (and Diljit Dosanjh and Kapil Sharma in bit roles), made Rs 160 crore against its Rs 75 crore budget. Payal Kapadia’s 'All We Imagine As Light' is about how the big bad city of Mumbai is an antagonist in the life of its migrant workers. The three out-of-towners are two Malayali women and one from one Ratnagiri who find solace in friendship in the face of disappearing husbands, Muslim lovers, gangsters of builders, and Mumbai’s assorted hardships including its disruptive monsoon. The film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It became the first Indian film to compete in the mainstream category since 1994, and the first film ever to actually win the Grand Prix or the grand prize.
This year’s biggest Bollywood success is the Shraddha Kapoor-starrer 'Stree 2'. The beautiful actor reprises her role of a 'bhootni' or a 'chudail' (a lady ghost) who fights off demons with her braided plait. It has a sweet feminist twist in it: the men of the village she haunts have to get home by dusk thanks to her lifting them away, while the women in the village are free to loiter about after dark. 'Stree 2' has gathered over Rs 875 crore worldwide, making it this year’s biggest blockbuster to date, and the ninth highest-grossing film out of India ever.
The collections of these films are stupendous. More so as this year’s hit rate for a Bollywood blockbuster film has been dismal. The two big Diwali releases – The Rohit Shetty action franchise 'Singham Again' and Anees Bazmee’s horror comedy franchise 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3' – are just about skirting between a lukewarm Rs 200- and Rs 300 crore two weeks after their release. The other big festival release was Ajay Devgn-starrer 'Maidaan' and Akshay Kumar-Tiger Shroff-starrer 'Bade Miyan Chote Miyan'-- both were forgettable flops.
There are no other major Bollywood films lined up this year. Allu Arjun’s 'Pushpa 2' is a pan-Indian film, ‘Baby John’ (a remake of an Atlee film, starring Varun Dhawan), and Vicky Kaushal’s historical 'Chhaavi' are all set to release in December.
There have been two aberrations. Imtiaz Ali-directed and Diljit Dosanjh-fronted musical biopic ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, released on Netflix in April this year, was universally loved by critics and viewers. Music genius A R Rahman marked a remarkable return to form with his outstanding score. However, the film did not have a theatrical release. 'Jigra' co-produced by Karan Johar and Alia Bhatt, with Bhatt in the main role, and directed by indie favourite Vasan Bala, failed terribly at the box office. It threatened to ruin this year’s tagline as the year of women in Bollywood to the ground.
Successful films with women in lead roles are too few and far between. Director-producer Rhea Kapoor’s previous outing, ‘Veere di Wedding’ (2018) was among the first female-led films to hit the Rs 100-crore club. Her sister, actor Sonam Kapoor’s ‘Neerja’ (2016) made Rs 131 crore, while Alia Bhatt’s ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ (2022) made Rs 209 crore. Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Queen’ (2013) was a massive blockbuster even at Rs 95 crore.
In an interview with me earlier this year, her first since her divorce from Aamir Khan and the first interview promoting ‘Laapataa Ladies’, Kiran Rao said that she was sure she wanted to make the film a little differently from the original screenplay by Biplab Goswami. "I didn’t want a dark story," she said, "Lots of things happen to women who end up in places they didn’t expect to go to. I wanted a film of optimism and hope."
Also read: 'I rejected Aamir Khan for a role in Laapataa Ladies': Kiran Rao
Rao played a big gamble by not casting her superstar husband Aamir Khan in the film. He had auditioned for actor Ravi Kishan’s role of a kind-hearted villain but feared his status would overpower the film and thus she "rejected" him. Other than Kishan and Chhaya Kadam in important roles, she took absolute newbies Nitanshi Goel, Pratibha Ranta and Sparsh Shrivastava. Rao deliberately kept the word ‘feminist’ out of the film’s conversation and called it a "funny, coming-of-age caper". This is despite a poignant scene in the film between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in a post-dinner chat promising to be friends, and not just relatives.
Kareena Kapoor and her bestie Rhea Kapoor make no bones about what women bring to the table and how they form a core support group for each other. Kareena credits Rhea for waiting a whole year for the movie star who got unexpectedly pregnant during the shoot of ‘Veere Di Wedding’. "This is the difference between a male producer and a female producer," Kareena told me in an interview. "We wanted to go with the shoot but the insurance angle didn’t allow us to. She really had the gumption, this is why her movies break boundaries."
Also read: What makes Kareena Kapoor Khan unstoppable
Rhea, on her part, says no one other than her sister Sonam and Kareena had faith in her film. "No matter how many successful films I will make, I will never forget that she believed in me when everyone said I couldn’t do it."
Perhaps the Hindi film industry, which has yet to see a big hit from a popular male star this year, is ripe for a change.