Film Review: Bulbbul

Prior to making her directorial debut with the Netflix original film, Bulbbul, Anvita Dutt has already had a rather renowned career for well over a decade as both a dialogue writer, and more prominently, a lyricist in the Bollywood industry. As you watch Bulbbul, it becomes clear that Dutt taps into the qualities of a good lyricist into crafting her film. It is a film driven less by real world logic, and more by the logic of emotions and dreams. The dialogue is littered with double meanings, repetition, and metaphors. And the flashback/flashforward structure has a rhythm to it that is not unlike the verse-chorus structure of a song.

In a sense, Bulbbul is a tragedy, it is also a revenge movie, it is also a period drama, but on top of all that, it is very much a gothic horror film. Taking place in 1881, we first meet the title character Bulbbul as a very young girl dressed in a bridal garb. She quickly makes friends with a boy about her age, Satya, who she assumes is the one she is to marry, but it sadly turns out to be Satya’s much older brother, Indranil (Rahul Bose), the head of a very wealthy family.

From there, we cut to 20 years later. Bulbbul (Tripti Dimri) is now the assumed head of the household after Indranil has left, and Satya (Avinash Tiwary) has returned from London. There are also a series of gruesome murders happening around the village, all the victims being men. Local superstitions have made people believe what killed them was a “chudail,” which is basically a witch/demon that takes a female form. Satya doesn’t believe in such things, but as he catches up with Bulbbul, he notices certain changes about her, the truths of which are gradually revealed as the story goes on.

If you can put two and two together, and see what the big reveal is going to be, congratulations, get yourself a cookie. What I admire about the reveal is that it isn’t so much treated as a reveal in the context of the story and the storytelling as much as it is an inevitability. By the time we get to it, we have witnessed Bulbbul suffer through many acts of cruelty rooted in a patriarchal society. If anyone needs a trigger warning, there’s a scene of domestic violence at around 54 minutes in, and a rape scene at around the hour and six minute mark.

Even before the really harsh things happen, Bulbbul is treated in a way that is meant to show her place in society as a woman. When she was a child, she asks her aunt why she wears a toe ring, to which she responds that it prevents the girl from flying away. In Indranil’s lavish mansion, he has a sister-in-law, Binodini (Paoli Dam), who upholds these traditions, and finds herself jealous of Bulbbul, and her independent spirit while she’s married to Indranil’s inexplicable twin brother, Mahendra, who suffers from a developmental disorder. Which one, I don’t know because mainstream Indian cinema has often frustratingly portrayed these disorders by just always having the actors behave like literal toddlers, which is a thing I could go on about, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Anyway, the film is constructed like a fable, like a fairy tale. It plays with familiar archetypes, and it displays grand gestures that are emphasized by big stylistic flourishes. The film is full of gorgeous sequences that are drenched in either deep blues or blood reds, with imagery that is like something ripped straight out of a nightmare. These flourishes serve to heighten the already otherworldly and ethereal qualities of the film, and bringing the emotion of each scene to the forefront.

And at the center of it all is the performance from Tripti Dimri, which is absolutely spectacular. She only has a few credits her name, but this is absolutely a star-making performance. The film often cuts between her as a younger, more naïve, and lively self and her more self-assured, quietly fierce, and confident self in the present, and Dimri handles both aspects of the character beautifully. The supporting players are all solid, particularly Paoli Damn, who brings a lot of complexity to what could easily be a thin character, but everything in the film ultimately revolves around Dimri, and is she wasn’t up to snuff, none of this would have worked.

While Bulbbul is perhaps not scary in the traditional sense, it is scary in how it digs into the realities of being a woman, and while the film takes place in the past, in pure fairy tale fashion, its themes and messaging sadly still applies to this very day. Are there elements that are worthy of critique? Sure, the structure in particular I can see not totally working for some. But I was still engaged from start to finish. I was enthralled by Anvita Dutt’s vision of the past, and the way she sets up a world that seems so unlike ours, and yet, so deeply rooted in problems that still plague us. It’s dense in nods and references to symbols of tradition and Indian mythology, reworking them with the tropes of a classic gothic horror story, and at a mere 94 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I was very impressed, and if you are looking for something new to watch, this is one that’s worth getting on your radar.

Bulbbul is now available on Netflix.