The “Haraamkhor” trailer, launched on Tuesday, assumes the comic mode in telling a tale of a cheesy school teacher in a dusty rural village who has a relationship with a minor student, as seen through the eyes of two young adolescent boys who have their own pubescent issues to deal with.
Shlok Sharma’s feature film debut has finally been granted a censor certificate, and that’s a big relief for the debutant as well as his movie’s producer Guneet Monga, both incidentally associates of Anurag Kashyap.
I must say “Haraamkhor” shows less self-importance and more humour than Kashyap’s cinema which tends to take itself and the responsibility of saving Hindi cinema from formulistic traps, too seriously.
“Haraamkhor” also breaks conventions. In fact, it is about breaking conventions. The trailer shows Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a school teacher who has a relationship with a minor student played by Shweta Tripathi of “Masaan” fame. To cut into the painful reality of the issue of an illegal liaison of a middle-aged man with an underage girl, the trailer assuming the comic mode, shows the entire sordid association as seen through the viewpoint of two young adolescent boys.
There is plenty of peeping into bathrooms and passing lewd comments in the trailer. Nawazuddin is an ideal choice for the role, given the messy milieu. Somehow, we can never take the rowdy and the renegade from his personality. Usually though even while playing a psychotic serial killer in “Raman Raghav”, Nawazuddin remains detached from sexual desire.
Not this time. Nawazuddin’s school teacher in “Haraamkhor” is sleazy. The cast of younger boys playing students is entirely eager to seem all-knowing about sex the way boys are at that age.
One of the kids is heard telling another, “If a boy and a girl see each other naked, their marriage is guaranteed.”
Okay, then.
When Nawazuddin’s screen wife threatens to walk out, he lies down on the floor and tells her it would have to be over his dead body.
The wife walks out over him.
“Haraamkhor”, when released alongside Shaad Ali’s posh “OK Jaanu” on January 13, 2017, may be guilty of many things, but never of taking itself too seriously.
Three stars to its trailer.
By Subhash K. Jha
