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Like the nepo-babies who are coached by managers and moms on how to tackle inevitable questions about privilege, every member of the film industry needs to have an Animal Answer™ in their holster by this point. You never know when somebody might leap out from behind the bushes and ask you what you thought about Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s controversial blockbuster. It’s better to be safe than sorry. And after virtually every colleague of hers tied themselves in knots trying to appear woke and yet not anger the most successful filmmaker in the country, actor Taapsee Pannu — the star of this week’s Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba — surprised everybody with perhaps the most solid Animal Answer™ of them all.
At a recent Indian Express event, Taapsee said that while she can understand the film’s appeal on paper, she cannot abide by some of Vanga’s creative choices. “It was a little strange to hear cheers and whistles at certain moments where I wouldn’t have liked the BGM to grow like that, where the audience is forced to cheer and clap,” she said, highlighting something that most others have failed to note. It’s baffling, therefore, for an actor who apparently understands the nuances of these things to have delivered a movie that essentially plays like something Vanga might want to be made tax-free.
Also read – Maharaj: Junaid Khan plays the world’s biggest red flag in Netflix’s monumentally misguided period drama
Taapsee Pannu, Vikrant Massey in Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba. (Photo: Netflix)
Second time guilty
Directed by Jayprad Desai, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba is the second iteration of the already ridiculous original movie, directed by Vinil Mathew. Released in 2021, the deeply problematic Haseen Dillruba told the dull story of a man and woman who bond over their shared sociopathy. In comparison, the sequel is a more muddled affair. Its inability, for instance, to effectively let the audience in on the joke turns it into something that can worryingly be read as an actual love story, as opposed to a satirical sendup of one. The film doesn’t appear to recognise that Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba is often guilty of the same mistakes as Animal.
Director Baz Luhrmann — known for flamboyant period dramas like The Great Gatsby and Elvis — explained this idea succinctly at an event in 2022. “In a way, everything is fiction,” he said. “Even if you’re making a documentary. If I did a documentary about Elvis and I had a billion cameras, I would still choose where to put the camera and that makes a difference. It’s someone’s point of view.” And so, when Vanga frames Ranbir Kapoor like a superhero in Animal and adds a war anthem in the background for good measure, there’s only one way in which the scene can be read. Spoiler alert: you’re not meant to hate him.
In Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, the two protagonists — Taapsee Pannu’s Rani Kashyap and Vikrant Massey’s Rishu Tripathi — are reintroduced in a scene designed to evoke heightened emotion. They cross paths in heavy rain, holding umbrellas like Raj Kapoor and Nargis in stylised slow-motion. A Kishore Kumar song plays in the background, as Rani and Rishu exchange romantic glances. The film cuts to a recap of its predecessor’s plot; we watch as Rishu and Rani cover up the crimes that forced them to hide out in Agra. The song doesn’t stop for a second. “Jo pagalpan ki hadd se na guzre, woh pyaar hi kya. Hosh mein toh rishte nibhaye jaate hain,” Rani says with pride in her voice, as her fingers graze Rishu’s prosthetic hand. The English subtitles read, “If love doesn’t push you to the brink of insanity, it’s not true love. Only the meek seek refuge in passionless relationships.”
Who said it better?
If her words sound familiar, you’ve nailed it. It’s like writer Kanika Dhillon — top-billed in the credits for her story, screenplay, and dialogues — took Vanga’s most incendiary statement, and decided to put her spin on it. Let’s jog our memories. In an interview with Film Companion after the release of his equally revolting Animal precursor, Kabir Singh, Vanga had bragged, “When you’re deeply in love… when you are deeply connected with a woman… if you don’t have the liberty of slapping each other, then I don’t see anything there.” As with his movies, he struggled to inject a degree of subtlety into his defence of, *checks notes*, and physical violence in romantic relationships. Ew.
For a movie that can’t resist explaining every plot development in minute detail to its audience, an audience that it has little respect for, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba neglects to question the behaviour of its troubled protagonists. Both of them, to be clear, are psychopaths. But it’s this film, more than the first, that paints Rani and Rishu as victims. “Kismat ki lakeeren haath pe chapi hoti hai dost. Humne toh apni mohabbat ke liye hath hi kaat ke phenk diya,” Rishu says in a scene that shows him as some Javed Akhtar-ian hero. Remember, they conspired to kill a man in the first film, and are now being forced to hide out separately from each other as a consequence of their crimes. But the movie wants us to root for them. And to this end, it throws a handful of adversaries into the mix to shift our allegiances in their favour.
One of them, the cop played by Aditya Srivastava, was also in the first movie. But true to its extra aesthetic, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba introduces a couple of new ‘villains’ — a serial killer played by Sunny Kaushal (don’t ask), and a menacing police officer played by Jimmy Shergill. In the film’s most hilarious scene, the officer — Uncle Montu is his name — looks directly into the camera, and declares Rani and Rishu to be “divine lovers.” To ensure that everybody is fully on their side, the movie includes a scene in which poor Rani is humiliated and beaten up in custody, like Karishma Tanna from Scoop.
Sunny Kaushal in Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba. (Photo: Netflix)
In the name of artistic freedom
What happened to the saucy seductress from the first film, the jilted lover who married Rishu to spite her former boyfriend, and then cheated on Rishu to spite him? Rani pushed the seemingly mild-mannered Rishu over the edge, unleashing his dormant toxicity. In Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, she makes the bizarre decision to marry Kaushal’s character, for no other reason than to throw the police off her scent. Meanwhile, Rishu, supposedly dead, goes about his business without much hassle. It helps when the cop who was tailing you magically disappears from the film every time you surface. You can almost see Dhillon’s story, screenplay and dialogues contorting to keep him out of jail.
To be clear, it isn’t written in the by-laws of Bollywood that a director can’t show compassion for a terrible character. It would only make discussions around their movie more challenging if they admitted as much. It’s also perfectly alright for fictional characters to be badly behaved on screen. But there’s a difference between a character behaving poorly and the movie endorsing their poor behaviour. For some reason, however, most people confuse a filmmaker’s artistic freedom to present ‘dark’ characters on screen with their obvious moral failings. They’re not the same thing! One cannot be questioned, but the other must. Rani and Rishu are free to kill as many people as they’d like but when Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba starts pretending like they’re the ones being unfairly treated, it’s essentially hopping onto the ‘kathghara’ and begging to be cross-examined.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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