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Bulgarian director and visual artist Konstantin Bojanov (Avé, Light Thereafter) returns to Cannes with his latest film, The Shameless. Inspired by his extensive travels throughout India, Bojanov spent 14 years developing the project, a noir thriller centred on the forbidden love found between two women in a community of sex workers in a fictional north Indian city. Originally intended as a documentary loosely based on William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India), Bojanov instead took inspiration from one of his subjects, a devadasi named Reshma, for the creation of this fictional tale.
Newcomer Anasuya Sengupta, who usually works as an artist and production designer, plays Renuka, a hardened sex worker from Delhi. The film opens with Renuka fleeing her brothel after killing a police inspector in her room. Toughened by what has clearly been a hard life, she coldly and strategically makes her way far from the scene of the crime to a city completely unknown to her. Once she arrives, she heads straight for the nearest brothel to get back on her feet the only way she knows how. She calls her childhood friend Murad (Tanmay Dhanania), the only man she trusts, to report her predicament and to enlist his help to acquire a new identity. In the meantime, she gets to work, immediately meeting an aggressive client named Dinesh (Rohit Kokate) who is bound to be trouble. No problem for the seasoned Renuka – she can handle herself, or so she thinks.
Next door, the sensitive Devika (breakout star Omara Shetty) tries to snatch a few moments of happiness from a lonely, cloistered existence. Devika, beautiful and bubbly as she raps about pretty girls on the roof, is doomed to a life of prostitution as a devadasi like her sister, mother, and grandmother. The seventeen-year-old has been spared so far by her grandmother’s concern over her delicate constitution, but the men of the village have already been circling, eagerly awaiting her all but inevitable “first night.”
Renuka spots the young Devika in the street crying over her sister’s departure for a larger brothel in Delhi, and the pair are immediately drawn to one another. Unafraid of what she wants, Renuka pursues the younger woman. They begin spending more and more time together, to the great disapproval of her mother, who forbids them from seeing each other. Ignoring her wishes, the women find comfort in each other in their harsh world, growing closer and more intimate as the weeks go by.
Their brief happiness they find in their connection proves short-lived however, as Renuka gets a call from Murad. The cops are closing in, and it’s only a matter of time before they find her. The only way out is for her to smuggle herself to the Philippines. He can help, but it’s going to cost her. She begs Devika to run away with her, but has to take care of something first. The abusive and volatile Dinesh, a powerful local politician, has gotten her pregnant. She needs to take care of it, but promises to return for her.
When Renuka returns, she discovers she’s been robbed not only of all her money, but by extension, her chance at freedom. In a fevered rage she lashes out at the innocent Devika who, desperate to hold onto the love of this woman, would do just about anything, even if it means stealing from her family and scoring drugs for her ailing lover jonesing for a fix. Devika’s existence is so bleak that running away with an addict twice her age at first appears to promise a kind of twisted fairy tale ending, but as the story careens chaotically to its inevitable conclusion, we are reminded how few options she really has. No matter where she turns, she is exploited, and almost entirely by the people who supposedly love her the most. The film ends on a defiant note, Devika walking away with her head held high to the shining sun. It’s a hopeful ending, but feels disingenuous, and one can’t help but fear what awaits her just around the corner.
The Shameless premieres in the Un Certain Regard programme at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
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