Hindi cinema is a lot of things for a lot of people. While the movies can be credited for teaching entire generations how to love, kiss, and seduce, we perhaps feel the need to highlight how monumentally wrong it has gone in perhaps telling us how not to love, kiss, and most importantly, seduce.
A stoic Jeetendra (as stoic as one can be whilst flower petals are raining on them by the boatload) resists the charms of a shimmery Dimple Kapadia (shot from every angle imaginable for maximum seductive effect). She thrusts her cleavage in his face and, at one point, the two sit inside a giant oyster that opens and shuts. Subtlety left the chat a long time ago.
As two lovers stranded in the rain who make their way to a nearby barn, Rahul Roy and Karishma Kapoor gave us serious #BarnyardSeductionGoals. A topless, wet Roy repeatedly attempts to grind against Kapoor to an audience of horses and goats culminating in a bunch of doves being flung at them from above.
A collective screech was heard at the FC office when, as a communal viewing experience, we all sat down to watch this video. Was it the zoom shot of Govinda's bare (shaved) chest? Was it the bum-to-bum humping under an indoor waterfall? Was it the vigorous chest thumps? Was it the disentangling of clothed crotch from clothed crotch? In this song, we see Shilpa Shirodkar attempting to seduce the lookalike of her lover, also played by Govinda. It's a welcome addition to the colourful genre of seducing-the-lookalike-by-mistake. (The latest being Jalte Diye From Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015))
While Andaz's (1994) 'Khada Hai' remains forever iconic, more relevant is Laadla's romantic number in which entitled boss Sheetal (Sridevi) attempts to seduce reluctant employee Raju (Anil Kapoor) under false pretences to teach him a lesson. While he's initially having none of it, through aggressive body contortions she is ultimately successful. Perseverance is key.
Sunita (Mamta Kulkarni) who marries Lallu (Akshay Kumar) because her father has given him all the property, conspires with her boyfriend (Mohnish Behl) to kill Lallu by seducing him with poisoned apples. Apples seem to be Kumar's preferred mode of seduction. (For more apples, check out 'In The Night No Control' from Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi).
Any song titled 'I Am Sixteen' should, and we can't stress this enough, NOT start with said 16-year-old in the shower, dreaming of her boyfriend (Ajay Devgn) kissing her bare leg. Plus points for a very efficient mode of seduction: Wearing white clothes in the rain. Minus points for ruining a beloved Sound of Music classic of the same name with this distinctly unwholesome display.
Fardeen Khan entices Meghna Kothari aside a waterfall almost exclusively through the use of his elbows. Part seduction song, part dance off, the kinetic choreography sees the two frantically gyrating every iota of their body in the name of love in what is clearly a very limb-heavy connection they share.
A woman (Priyanka Chopra) imagines a seductive tryst with the man she's filed a false rape case against (Akshay Kumar). Her seduction technique involves throwing a glass of water, and later a deck of cards, on his face, then writhing on the floor. If the song title wasn't on-the-nose enough, the lyrics get straight to the point: I want to make love to you. It's shot in one take, which might be hard to notice if your mind is on other things…like the gigantic cellphone advertisement in the back, which you can't help but notice as the leading lady shimmies against it furiously.
Bebo, (Akshay Kumar's doctor in this film) during an operation, leaves her watch inside his stomach. To avoid a lawsuit she tries to seduce, tranquilize, and perform another operation on him to get her watch back. In the end, they fall in love. So perhaps the old patriarchal advice was right: the way to a man's heart is through his (operated) stomach. (Very Yeh Mera Dil vibes, if you ask us; the glitter and the crawl.)
Naina (Sonam Kapoor) attempts to avenge her father's death by stealing all the gold of the murderer (Neil Nitin Mukhesh). This includes flapping her arms like a struggling bird, slithering on the floor like a peeved snake, and headbanging like lost souls in a metal music concert, with hands outstretched horizontally seeking Christian salvation. Seduction is the new pilates.
