Prathyush Parasuraman
Inter-religious love — giving a single mother the space to play the protagonist in her story, refusing to collapse her into her motherhood.
The Yearning Gay Principal — however facetious — who becomes the pivot of the story, mobilizing all the film’s characters to his hospital bed.
The fact of an older woman loving a younger man with no shame or explanation needed, and the recklessness of modern love in it — the hookup culture with its momentarily insatiable itch of the groin, which sometimes blooms into more, and sometimes recedes.
For Bombay Talkies (2013)and Lust Stories (2018)— he foregrounded gay desire and female self-pleasure. When was the last time a dildo helped a film climax?
It is terrible to reduce a film to its themes, but we tend to forget to what ends, and in what context these films are being made, and Johar’s easy hand refuses to moralize, or even state it is progressive.