Sex comedy and Sunny Leone: Bollywood's new hit formula revealed

An ex-porn star on a Bollywood romp and a Hunterrr hoping for a box-office kill are giving sex in Hindi mainstream cinema an interesting spin.

"Swachh Bollywood" may be the new abhiyaan but when it comes to pampering fantasy urges of its audience, Hindi filmdom is quietly sexing up the act. This week’s release Hunterrr underlines as much, as does the inevitable rise of Sunny Leone, porn’s gift to Bollywood.

Amusing twist of filmi fate isn’t it, how Sunny’s heave towards stardom should continue at a time when censor strictures demand our films live in the stainless '60s. Amusing too, how a small film that brazenly calls itself Hunterrr should emerge as one that has raised abundant curiosity lately.

Hunterrr is a rare Bollywood entertainer that tries giving the sex comedy a sort of legitimacy and sensibility the genre never enjoyed. The film tries taking the genre into an area we might define as good cinema. Which makes it an unusual experiment.

In India where good cinema primarily means sanitised, feel-good family fare, sex as entertainment has been taboo so far — unless you are talking the C-list. Random recall on films that managed to garner attention by relevantly dealing with sex would include small-bud-get products BR Ishara made in the '70s, or the stray '80s sex-com Anubhav starring Shekhar Suman and Padmini Kolhapure. Despite being ahead of their time, Ishara’s Chetna or Charitra — or Anubhav, for that matter — did not emerge game changers. Sex as the driving force of a script or its characters only continued to interest hawkers of sleazy slapstick, from Dada Kondke films to Grand Masti. (You could talk of David Dhawan’s hits with Govinda in the '90s but the raunch trick in these films was part of a bigger package that also included melodrama and action).

Its bid to inject sexual maturity into Bollywood entertainment makes Hunterrr unusual, though mainstream stars will continue to avoid working in such films.

Which brings us to Sunny, and the fact that it is evident by now she is no one-film fluke. Sunny is perhaps the first mainstream Bollywood heroine to entirely bank on sex appeal for stardom — that too, the kind of stardom that gives her the luxury to play out lead roles in heroine-oriented flicks.

Exclusive sex appeal has traditionally been domain of the vamp in the past, and heroines have normally shied away. Since the '70s mainly, actresses have revealed a pattern. They have peddled sensuality of varying proportions depending on what image they choose to exude, but have always blended that image with plain Jane vibes when needed.

Most actresses labelled "sex symbols" in recent times could hardly ever sell a film by themselves as Sunny does. For a while Mallika Sherawat looked like she could, but she lost the plot somewhere.

Sunny’s rise to Bollywood stardom could appear a freak shot cocktailing imported irresistibility with off-the-pornshelf forbiddance. It is only about sex, so A-list actors will continue to avoid her. Still, if Hunterrr marks a coming of age for sex as a formula in Bollywood, Sunny Leone is literally revelling as the genre’s brand ambassador.