Damini

1993 175’ col/scope Hindi d/sc Rajkumar Santoshi pc Cineyug p Karim Morani, Bunty Soorma, Aly Morani st Santanu Gupta dial Dilip Shukla lyr Sameer c Ishwar Bidri m Nadeem-Shravan, Vanraj Bhatia lp Rishi Kapoor, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Sunny Deol, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Anjan Srivastava, Paresh Rawal, Tinnu Anand, Vijayendra Ghatge, Rohini Hattangadi

Damini (Sheshadri), the virtuous daughter of an impoverished father (Srivastava) who is worried about getting his two daughters married, achieves the impossible when the millionaire Shekhar Gupta (Kapoor) falls for her. Shekhar’s family, including his mother (Hattangadi) and his mother’s brother (Anand), are initially against Damini but finally accept her, until an incident disrupts the entire family. On the day of Holi, Damini witnesses her husband’s younger brother and his three friends rape a maidservant. The entire family, including her husband Shekhar, conspire to hush up the scandal. When Damini refuses to keep silent, the family, aided by a scheming lawyer (Puri) and a corrupt police force, try to make her go insane. She is eventually helped by a down-and-out lawyer Govind (Deol) who defends her in court. For a remarkable essay on this extraordinary woman-centered melodrama and mild commercial success, see Madhava Prasad, ‘Signs of Ideological Re-Form in Two Recent Films’ (1996).

Film