Agra (2023)

SPOILERS FOR AGRA (2023)

Guru's piercing eyes are perhaps his most defining feature in the film. Through his eyes, we are given a window into lust, fear, anger, and anxiety. Mostly lust.

Kanu Behl's follow up to the brilliant Titli (2014) takes another deep dive into the Indian male psyche, directing our attention to widespread sexual repression.

Guru ogles at women in public, fantasizes about having sex with a coworker during his breaks, and finds some release in an anonymous chatroom that he frequents when looking for someone to sext with. The chat always seems busy, but if you look past the activity the messages are alike in their desperation; a steady beat of bots masquerading as girls seeking hung men, men masquerading as hung men seeking any woman, and then Guru - furiously searching for a woman in the digital ether on his way to work or in the bathroom at night - with a persistent mating call: "Milke karogi koi chat? Bolo? Hello?".

Agra is set in the eponymous city, known internationally for its mausoleum of love, yet Behl denies us the visage itself, for this is not a story of love. Similarly, the movie is set to diagetic tunes from the 60s and 70s, which make for a stark contrast to the film's story. Bollywood songs that feature in the movie are romantic, passionate, and talk of a highly-idealised romance that so many Indians grow up consuming but never realising in their adult lives. Guru's approach to sex is the polar opposite of the image conveyed by Bollywood music - he descends on his partner in an animalistic manner, near-hungry.

Space, or rather lack thereof, is central to Agra much like the city it is set in. Guru lives on the ground floor with his mother, while his father lives upstairs with his mistress who has also cultivated a garden on the terrace - the grass is literally greener overhead. There is little privacy to express sexuality. When we do see characters indulging in sex, it is either in a hotel room or in the case of Guru, a cyber cafe where the owner can close shop at will. With this, Agra posits that financial independence is tied to fulfillment of sexual desire in India. After all, money buys privacy. 

Money also decides if you're appealing to a potential partner. There is a stunning sequence in the movie where Guru meets up with a girl he has been sexting anonymously. With great anticipation, he shows up to a coffee shop for their eventual meetup. Whether it is the girl in question or a stranger is left open to interpretation, but someone does show up. Someone who checks Guru out intensely in response to his probing stare, before pretending to receive a call and walking out of the shop. The entire scene is shot with Guru standing outside the cafe for a smoke, while the girl sits inside the air-conditioned shop by a window. Their placement, and their appearances, hint towards a rejection on the basis of class. Eventually, he finds companionship with a stranger who he stalks from a juice shop back to the cyber cafe she operates. Unhindered by class barriers, his relationship does turn physical in real life.

The film briefly mentions a traumatic childhood, which when coupled with the lack of privacy and a complicated family life, are enough to send Guru over the edge as time goes by. There are also hints that a family doctor has abused Guru in the past. Consequently, he is incapable of understanding platonic affection. When his cousin consoles him after his failed date at the coffee shop, his response is to kiss her with an 'I love you' before he proceeds to chase her around the house in an attempted rape.

This moment also presents a stark contrast in how sexual desires and transgressions are treated differently based on who is committing them. While Guru's cousin's complaint gets dropped by the assessing physician out of sympathy for the mentally strained perpetrator, and his father has managed to live with both his mother and mistress at the same time for years without any significant legal or social backlash, Guru's lover faces near-instant suspicion of manipulation and ulterior motives as she is a widow involved with the younger man. Guru's cousin doesn't get any visible affirmation of support from her family either, with the focus being on the embarrassment brought on the family by his actions and concern for his wellbeing.

Looking back, it is surprising just how much Agra manages to tackle in the course of one film. Though it could have touched upon another obvious outlet of sexual repression - internet porn consumption - it is a minor complaint in the face of a movie that manages to say so much in so little time. This is a rare film, for not many are willing to touch subject matter like this in Bollywood.