[Netflix] She Season 1

[Ga[M]er]

They set off into the night, her escalating anxiety only further keying him up. Their coitus gets interrupted when she reveals that she is actually an undercover police constable. When Bhumika (Aaditi Pohankar) turns her gun on Sasya (Vijay Varma), he is surprised as well as aroused – a dance that helps the first season of the Netflix series She maintain its poise even in its frequently unbalanced moments.

Profane games abound in the seven-episode show, which has been created by Imtiaz Ali, co-written by him and Divya Johry, and directed by Arif Ali and Avinash Das. She marks Imtiaz Ali’s streaming debut and a shift into uncharted territory for a director best known for popcorn romances. Co-director Avinash Das made the stirring Anaarkali of Aarah (2017), about a dancer’s struggle for justice and dignity.

Freed from the constraints of what is considered acceptable in the movies, the creators roll out the dirty talk, the lustful deeds, and the suggestion that sexual slavery is a precondition for the liberation of body and soul.

Bhumika is pushed into weaponising her gender by her boy scout handler Fernandez (Vishwas Kini). Fernandez wants to know whether Sasya and his boss, Nayak (Kishore Kumar G), are planning something big. The constable turns out to be a suitable, if somewhat awkward, soldier. Her husband has rejected her for being sexually frigid. Her sister appears to be turning tricks to support the family. Her hypochondriac mother is a drag, both in Bhumika’s life and in the series.
Bhumika’s thawing begins with her initial, fumbling encounter with Sasya, which, although it barely qualifies as erotic, touches her in ways that she hadn’t anticipated. Sasya’s crude observation especially resonates with Bhumika – you have a scorpion between your legs.

Described as a master of disguise and multiple identities, Sasya also has the fevered imagination of the excitable scriptwriter looking to add extra layers of flesh to the crime thriller template. He is Mills & Boon with lashings of S&M. You have no idea what I am going to do to you tonight, he tells Bhumika when they first meet. Another Sasya pick-up line for the ages: nobody looks at you as I do.

Is the bait going to become the baited? Will Bhumika’s newfound desirability improve her self-esteem and free her of her reserve? Her predicament holds for about four episodes before the plot goes off the rails. By the time Bhumika finally meets the shadowy Nayak, She has collapsed into a regular drug bust exercise with the added insight that power is the best aphrodisiac.

The idea of sex as a weapon and then as an equaliser has been explored with varying degrees of sophistication in the movies. The arthouse exploitation drama The Night Porter (1974) daringly explores the taboo romance between a Nazi jailer and his Jewish prisoner. In Out of Sight (1998), Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney burn up the screen as a marshal and a bank robber.