I first encountered Vittorio Cottafavi back in 2011 or so – the golden age of film forums and Tumblr, where screenshots played an important role in garnering enthusiasm for a lot of underseen or somewhat misunderstood/mis-categorized filmmakers. His spectacular pepla and historical epics scratched an itch for me then for films made with actual, mechanically constructed sets and a real eye for scale. But it wasn’t until recently, when our editor Jhon Hernandez took on writing about Cottafavi for Lucky Star that I started to pay attention to his melodramas and got to know him as a maker of films about women.
Jhon has written here about Una donna libera, the last of 5 films about women made by Cottafavi in the 1950s. Jhon also translated an incredible interview with Cottafavi originally published in Présence Du Cinéma.
As for myself, I chose to spend my week watching Dabba Cartel – a newly released OTT series on Netflix from none other than the prestigious Excel Entertainment, a production house co-founded by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani. It all started with Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, a film I am rather fond of and that definitely marks a distinct point in Bollywood cinema. A film very much about upper middle class to rich urban youth at the precipice of actual adult responsibilities that came out right at the cusp of the new millennium – it felt fresh and like the advent of something new. Since then, the production house has grown into what is arguably one of the most successful Indian streaming studios, starting with Inside Edge, Made in Heaven and Mirzapur, all made within a span of two years, right at the start of the Indian streaming boom.
In the two plus decades since Dil Chahta Hai came out, Excel Entertainment also seems to have gotten increasingly interested in content far outside of the world that the characters and stories in DCH, Rock On and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara or anyone at Excel Entertainment seems to have any real life familiarity with. Which in and of itself is not a bad thing. But even back in 2011 when Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was released, I recall film critic Baradwaj Rangan remarking that the dialogues in the film feel too readily like they were written in English and translated into Hindi. That inherent divide between the creators and their subject matter only seems to have gotten even wider in recent times (I’m looking right at you Gully Boy) and here it assumes somewhat comical proportions.
Their most recent foray then is into the world of a group of Indian women that cross paths in a housing colony and pivots their dabba/lunchbox service to a much more lucrative drug delivery business. With all the kerfuffle since Baahubali about how Bollywood needs to pay attention to the other regional cinemas in India and the quest for a pan-Indian audience, it makes sense that the much-lauded cast has two prominent and beloved South actresses as key parts of the ensemble – Jyothika from Kollywood and Nimisha Vijayan from Malayalam cinema respectively. Combine that with appearances by everyone from Shabana Azmi to Lillete Dubey and Gajraj Rao and murmuring comparisons to Breaking Bad – “But it’s all Women making Dabbas, Get it?” – and it makes sense that there was a lot of anticipation for it. And yet, like most (or all) of the content that comes out of this production house, this too feels like what Richie Rich (the cartoon kid) might imagine life on the streets is like.
It is almost bewildering how confused the creators seem to be about what exactly the show is about or what tone it wants to adopt. There’s a big pharmaceutical scam causing deaths across the nation. There’s a small but rapidly growing drug cartel run by a group of women motivated by money (all for mostly honorable reasons) and the quest for freedom. There’s a women escaping from abuse storyline, exes threatening to leak sex tapes and some good old sexism in the workplace. Almost forgot the check-all-the-boxes lesbian romance track (that one’s actually kind of lovely) and my favorite, an elaborate backstory where the reigning drug queen of Bombay, and the right-hand person of the Mafia lord escapes the mafia and disappears to …. Wait for it…. THANE – where Bombay criminals go when they don’t want to be found by anyone unwilling to take the Central Railway Line, which seems to be everyone working at Excel Entertainment.
We live in an era of television where both moral and tonal ambiguity is both the norm and the appeal. But Dabba Cartel just feels toneless. Events just happen and pile up but none of it really seems to matter. Key characters are introduced really late in the series and new super-hit drugs are created within minutes in apartment kitchens, but rather than create renewed excitement or life, these gestures seem like distractions, and the entire show becomes cacophonous. It is not as though there is no precedent for this type of storyline (or at least some part of it) in India – in Kolamavu Kokila for instance, Nelson turned it into black comedy with a young girl played by Lady Superstar Nayanthara smuggling cocaine under the guise of peddling rice flour and made it a hilarious twist on the respectable Indian middle class family picture.
I am mostly indifferent to all the handwringing over nepotism in Bollywood, but with a show like Dabba Cartel which seems to fail so fundamentally despite a competent and stellar cast and a reasonably fun premise, one has to wonder about the lack of experience from anyone behind the scenes. The show creators include Farhan Akhtar’s wife and 3 other people with no IMDB credits besides Dabba Cartel. Should have trusted them when they warned us all that you only get one life!
Lucky Star 