CHENNAI: Trafficked women are humans — and that’s exactly what director Tabrez Noorani wants us to remember with “Love Sonia.”
Written by Ted Caplan and Alkesh Vaja, the film infuses a sense of endearing humanism into the narrative as it trains the spotlight on tortured women who find themselves involved in the sex trade.
Inspired by true events and shot in a documentary style, “Love Sonia” captures the horrifying reality of Mumbai’s underbelly — where men, trying to make a fast buck, turn into monsters by trafficking innocent teenagers.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is its characterization. Whether it is debt-ridden farmer Shivaji (Adil Hussain), ruthless brothel owner Rashmi (Freida Pinto) — hardened over the years — or Madhuri (Richa Chadha) whose transformation into a good Samaritan is one of the film’s highlights, all characters have been created to perfection.
Prime among them is Faizal (Manoj Bajpayee) who acts as both a mentor and romantic interest to the girls.
One of these girls is Sonia, 17, who is pushed into the dark confines of a brothel after she goes searching for her sister, sold to moneylender Baldev Singh (Anupam Kher), by their father, Shivaji.
What a superlative performance Mrunal Thakur delivers as the title character. Sucked into the seedy trade of human trafficking, Sonia is not only raped and punished for not falling in line, but shipped away in containers to Hong Kong and later Los Angeles, too — her agonizing cries for help panning across continents.
Manish (Rajkummar Rao) enters the film as a savior, but Sonia is too broken by now to believe that not all men are beasts and pushes him away. For most of the film, the director remains steadfast in his commitment to present a heart-rending picture of prostitutes, with Lucas Bielan’s lens acting as a constant reminder of the fact that women of supposed ill repute could be trapped in a cage.
‘Love Sonia’ presents a tragic picture of trafficked women
‘Love Sonia’ presents a tragic picture of trafficked women
- Sucked into the seedy trade of human trafficking, Sonia is not only raped and punished for not falling in line
Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi weighs in on Mia Farrow
- Mia “has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t,” Soon-Yi said
- Now 47 and married for more than 20 years, Soon-Yi was a 21-year-old college freshman in 1991 when she began an affair with Allen
NEW YORK: Woody Allen’s wife, Soon-Yi Previn, broke a long silence to defend the filmmaker against allegations of sexual abuse brought by his daughter, Dylan, speaking out on the running feud between her mother, Mia Farrow, and her husband.
“What’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust,” Previn said in a rare interview with New York Magazine.
Mia “has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t,” she said.
In the article by Daphne Merkin, a longtime friend of Allen’s, Soon-Yi discusses her difficult childhood relations with her adopted mother, portraying her as dismissive and abusive.
“Mia described me as ‘elegant,’” she is quoted as saying. “It was the only positive thing she said about me.”
Now 47 and married for more than 20 years, Soon-Yi was a 21-year-old college freshman in 1991 when she began an affair with Allen.
Farrow, the director’s long-time partner on screen and off, discovered the affair a year later, causing an angry public break that set the rest of the family against Allen and Soon-Yi.
In a television interview in January, Dylan, Allen’s adopted daughter with Farrow, revived accusations that her father molested her in August 1992 when she was seven years old.
In a statement to New York Magazine, Dylan said it was “offensive” of Soon-Yi to assert that she had been pushed to accuse Allen in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
“This only serves to revictimize me,” Dylan said. “Thanks to my mother, I grew up in a wonderful home, filled with love, that she created.”
After the article’s publication, Dylan also tweeted a statement signed by several of Mia Farrow’s biological and adopted children, attesting that their mother has always been “a caring and giving parent.”
“We reject any effort to deflect from Dylan’s allegation by trying to vilify our mom,” it said.
Ronan Farrow, a son of Mia Farrow and Allen who won a Pulitzer prize for investigative articles in the New Yorker that helped propel the #Me Too movement, denounced Merkin’s article as “shameful.”
“I owe everything I am to Mia Farrow,” he tweeted.
“As a brother and a son, I am angry that New York Magazine would participate in this kind of a hit job, written by a longtime friend and admirer of Woody Allen,” he said, adding, “Survivors of abuse deserve better.”
