Short Stream | Bobby Beauty Parlour: The finishing line of childhood
Two friends working in a claustrophobic beauty parlour on the hottest day of the year face a life-changing arrival, a departure, freedom, and fear
The hottest day of the year in Noida can be extreme in a lot of ways. It is, for Eelu (Adrija Sinha) and Manu (Parul Rana), the protagonists in Shashwat Dwivedi’s debut short film Bobby Beauty Parlour, produced by Anurag Kashyap and Ranjan Singh, and co-written by Dwivedi and Janhavi Asthana, who is also the cinematographer. The story is by Asthana.
Besides the discomfort and the confinement that the hottest day has caused the two best friends — on the verge of adulthood, in the last leg of their teenage years, when innocence and the desire to break away to adult life cause tumult in hearts and minds — the heat becomes a sort of mirror to what they are feeling. Will they stew in the mugginess that is Noida in summer — and that is their life, working for Aunty Bobby (Preeti Kochar) at Bobby Beauty Parlour?
Eelu drops by to see her best friend Manu. While there, when the owner of the salon suffers a heatstroke. The girls find themselves alone and unable to get out due to the severe heat. Trapped together, the story moves to mumblecore territory. A chat leads to a laugh, a dance, and a fight. A man arrives looking for Eelu. Eelu is about to leave for better opportunities in another city. Neither of the girls is entirely convinced the man is safe enough for Eelu. But Ella will leave; she has made up her mind. Manu feels trapped. Their friendship is under a momentous test, suddenly confronted with the pain of growing up — the anticipation as well as the loss.
Asthana, who wrote the story, says that the kernel of the idea came from her own experience of leaving behind close friends when she had to move from a town she lived in as a child. “I have often wondered if we would still be friends, what it would be like to meet them now. I wanted to explore that sense of loss through this story,” she says. Asthana works primarily as a cinematographer in Mumbai and has worked with various productions in different capacities.
In Bobby Beauty Parlour, the camera captures the suffocating canvas of the parlour and infuses the moments between the friends with baroscopic tension as well as tenderness.
Watch the film here:
Dwivedi’s directorial signature is restraint in over-dialogued scenes and authenticity in milieu, language, and art direction. He has worked with producer-director Anurag Kashyap as a songwriter and script supervisor. His last film as a songwriter is Kashyap’s Kennedy, which played at Festival de Cannes last year. Dwivedi’s vision has a verité charm about the milieu and context of Delhi where the story unfolds. “We did not struggle like many short filmmakers do. We had the technical resources for this film, thanks to our collaboration with Ranjan Singh and Anurag Kashyap. What you see is really me holding together a lot of talented technicians, and Janhavi’s story,” Dwivedi says. Under his direction, the actors, Adrija Sinha and Parul Rana, perform the roles with conviction and nuance.
Bobby Beauty Parlour had its premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in June this year, and the second leg of its film festival run begins next year.
Producers: Anurag Kashyap, Ranjan Singh
Running time: 18 minutes, 21 seconds
Budget: ₹10.5 lakh (approx)
Language: Hindi
Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian short film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but is making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section in hindustantimes.com
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