By Ila Ananya
We just came across Naked, a new short film with Kalki Koechlin and Ritabhari Chakraborty. Koechlin plays the role of Sandy, an actor known for her “bold and fearless” roles — as the woman who wore a yellow bikini in one of her movies, and who now has to deal with a sex scene from her latest movie being leaked online.
In the short film we see Chakraborty playing the role of Ria, a journalist who has been asked by her boss to “encash” the moment of the leaked scene, pushing Sandy to give her sensational headlines. The cyber-bullying reminded us a little bit of the recent Suchi Leaks, where allegedly intimate photos and videos of many Kollywood celebrities were posted on Twitter. Soon after many more handles came up in Suchitra’s name, all posting porn clips.
Directed by Rakesh Kumar, Naked manages to a point finger at how entertainment journalism is largely sensationalised, before it also goes on to talk about violence against women in terms of consent, sexuality, rape and cyber-bullying. The end is a bit odd and perfectly happy in how it becomes a bit of a public service announcement, encouraging women to report online abuse with no mention of all the things men need to be taught or of all the systems that don’t take online abuse seriously. Perhaps it would have worked just as well if it only played by how much we come to like both these women and as a conversation between them — Sandy for how upset she gets in the interview, and Ria for being the journalist excited about her first big interview made to ask questions she doesn’t want to.