Last night, I watched Malá Morská Víla (1976), the Czech version of The Little Mermaid. Not because I’m a cinephile (the only filmography I’m well versed with belongs to Govinda and Shah Rukh Khan), but because I saw a tweet about the gorgeous ~aesthetics~ of this movie (and partly because I’m unemployed.) The OP was absolutely right—the movie was fascinating. The actors playing mermaids did not have fishtails, nor were they clad in shell-shaped bikinis. The budget of the entire film was probably less than the money spent on Ariel’s hair colouring in the upcoming adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Most importantly, the source material was close to what Hans Christian Andersen envisioned, not the sanitised version Disney wants us to watch.
The most striking thing about it was undoubtedly the fashion. The colours, the outfits, the hair—oh my god, the hair was spectacular. This movie probably invented that ‘seapunk aesthetic’ Tumblr was obsessed with a decade ago. After that, I watched Do Revenge (2022). Starring Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes, this movie was basically the answer to the question: “What if we take Strangers On A Train (1951) but give it the aesthetic of Gossip Girl (2007-2012) and the dialogues of Mean Girls (2004)?” I didn’t know I needed this movie so badly until I watched it. It was unhinged but glorious, and it really made me miss the “extra-ness” of the Bollywood movies I’ve grown up watching and loving. In the quest to be taken seriously, a lot of Hindi films seem to be losing the edge that made them stand out.
This took me back to the time when we made movies like Rakesh Roshan’s ’80s classic Khoon Bhari Maang (1988). Rekha’s look, her makeover, her zest for revenge, that enthusiastic crocodile… this movie genuinely had it all. Then there was also his ‘reincarnation on cocaine saga’ Karan Arjun (1995), a movie where Rakhee’s character is such a drama queen—and rightly so, if I may add—that I can’t believe her tormentors didn’t simply burst into flames the moment she looked at them. With Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai (2000), Rakesh took the best parts of Khoon Bhari Maang and Karan Arjun, gifting us a gloriously campy revenge drama with shocking deaths inside water bodies, lookalikes, the big dance number at the climax and some serious fashion goals.
