PATRALEKHA’S 360 DEGREE TURNAROUND

March 1, 2016, 03.04 PM IST
After the release of her debut film, Hansal Mehta’s CityLights, when Patralekha met a couple of A-line directors they couldn’t reconcile the image they had of her as a small town girl with an eight-year-old daughter, Rakhi, who even as a bar dancer is far from sexy and glam, with the trendy 24-year-old who walked into their office. “They’d thought I was 30-plus,” she reminisces with a laugh, admitting that even though she landed a few urban flicks after they saw her for real, the offers didn’t impress. “I wanted something as impactful as CityLights, yet different.”
After a year of waiting, she approached Mahesh Bhatt for help and he asked her to contact Vikram Bhatt who frankly told her he needed someone really sexy and bold to play Ramona in Love Games. Unfazed, Patralekha got a photo-session done, concentrating on the styling without trying to grab eyeballs. And she landed the role of a woman who she describes as “dangerous and materialistic, a sexual predator who is unapologetic about her immoral lifestyle”.
“It’s a 360 degree turnaround from CityLights and Ramona is going to make even Priyanka Chopra’s Sonia in Aitraaz look like a good girl,” insists Patralekha, who found her muse in Basic Instinct’s Sharon Stone. “Watching Sharon, I realised that I had to lose all my inhibitions and change my mindset drastically so it would translate in my body language.”
There was plenty of prep, yet the first couple of days in Cape Town with a unit which had still to become her family and an intimate scene with an actor, Gaurav Arora, who was a stranger, were daunting to say the least. “But I quickly realised that whether the person is your boyfriend or just a friend, doing an intimate scene in front of a crew of 40 is equally difficult. Doing them with Raj (Rajkummar Rao) in CityLights had given me as much anxiety. Fortunately, chatting with Gaurav before the scene, admitting to him how uncomfortable I was, and having Vikram sir behind the camera, made it easier. Vikram sir’s films are bold but it’s all in the mind, you don’t have to show your body as I understood during the costume trials,” Patralekha points out.
Still, she admits that while her dad was “cool” with her choice of role, mommy was a little awkward initially but she didn’t try to stop her. Having grown up in Shillong, in a matriarchal society, Patralekha had been brought up to follow what she believed was right and not quit mid-way.
And what was her beau Rajkummar’s reaction? She points out that being an actor himself, he knows that what happens on camera is confined to the set and does not go beyond. “Raj himself went nude in LSD. We both come from non-filmi, humble backgrounds so every film is priceless for us and we don’t indulge in any kind of small-minded talk,” she asserts.
But what if the audience and filmmakers, seduced by the bold new Ramona, start believing Patralekha to be her mirror image? Stereotyping is not uncommon for a Bhatt heroine, be it Mallika Sherawat or a Bipasha Basu. “You’re saying Love Games is a gamble? But then so was CityLights and it got me plenty of accolades and attention. Since I am not from the industry, I don’t know the norms nor do I have anyone to tell me what is right or wrong. I have few options and nothing to lose,” she argues.
On the stereotyping, she is confident that the filmmakers she wants to work with will know that Ramona is just a character she lives as an actor and give her a chance to do another 360-degree turn. If not, she is ready to sit at home and enhance her craft. She points out that apart from National Award-winning director Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan, a Hindi adaptation of his Rajkahini, she is not in talks with any other filmmaker.
And has playing Ramona changed her perception of love, turned it into a game? “Ramona was deprived of love, so she didn’t understand it,” Patralekha reasons. “I believe love is beautiful and should be spread around because it is a cure to unhappiness.” Touche!