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Yours forever

Lillette speaks about her forthcoming film ‘Bow Barracks Forever’

Age no bar Lillete Dubey

There may be no female parallel to Amitabh Bachchan, but at the rate Hindi filmdom is coming up with variety in storyboards, older women too are getting interesting roles. Irrespective of whether the films work at the box office, the roles, nonethele ss, are impressive. Take Parzania, in which Sarika plays a middle-aged Parsi woman. She also starred in Sacred Evil in an interesting role. Then came Yatra starring Rekha in the lead. Following sui t is Bow Barracks Forever directed by famous Bengali actor and saxophonist Anjan Dutta. In the film, Lillette Dubey plays a pivotal role.

Bow Barracks draws its name from an Army garrison in old Calcutta. It was leased out to Anglo-Indians after the Second World War. It still houses several Anglo-Indian families. But the barrack is now crumbling and is in desperate need of repair.

This 118-minute English film is a tale of several resolute Anglo-Indian families living in this tattered barrack: their hopes, dreams, aspirations and how these lonely but courageous people react to the changes happening around them.

One can make out the chirp in Lillette Dubey’s voice as she talks about her role in the film, “Anjan flattered me by saying that this role was only for me and if I didn’t agree to it, he wouldn’t make the film! Thank God at this age, I have a role of substance. I play Emily Lobo, a 50-year-old widow. She makes cake and wine. She is spirited, feisty, and glamorous. She doesn’t accept any bullshit. She saves money to call her son who lives in London. She leaves several messages for him and takes it for granted that the son is too busy saving money to call her back. The son, however, never calls her back in four years. There is a cheater called Peter (played by Victor Banerjee) who is in love with Emily and keeps wooing her. It feels nice to be pampered at this age,” laughs Dubey.

In this film every character (Sabyasachi Chakravarty, Moon Moon Sen, Rupa Ganguly, Neha Dubey, Avijit Dutt, Clayton Rodgers and Sohini Pal) grows by the time the film ends, she states.

She has been extremely choosy about her film roles. “After Zubeidaa every director wanted me to play that kind of slightly vampish role, and after Gadar, they flooded me with roles of a strict mom. Despi te roles not coming at that age, I refused to be typecast. Some sensitive people realised it and offered me roles that I could like. They included Baghban and Corporate.”

Of late she has signed some very interesting roles. All of them are different. In Sanjay Gupta’s Pankh for instance, she plays an ambitious mother who has a complex relationship with her son.

“This film is a story of 24 hours, done in flashback and flash-forward style. It is dark. It deals with gender confusion. Bipasaha Basu and a new boy Maradona are playing pivotal roles in it.” The varied line-up continues.

RANA SIDDIQUI

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