Director: Aaryaman Nagpal
Writer: Aaryaman Nagpal
Cast: Savar Adlakha, Vedika Kapoor
Running time: 8mins
Film festivals are expensive – and so they often struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. With submission fees often posing as the only dependable source of revenue that many festivals have access to, that can make granting waivers difficult.
Stories told by artists working on a shoe-string budget, or who are hit by censorship, or subjected to international sanctions, still need a platform, though. That’s why Indy Film Library’s Saturday Matinees series has returned for a fifth season.
Over this most recent run of matinees, IFL is showcasing work from places where monetary and legal constraints have prevented the free and easy communication of their artistic or political visions.
The final film in our free-to-view programme is by India-based filmmaker Aaryaman Nagpal. A disturbing and at-times crude film about the inner victim complex of a misogynistic serial killer, it will no doubt split opinion when it comes to what is or isn’t appropriate when tackling such a topic.
The first, cloying experience we have with Armaan (Savar Adlakha), he is desperately pleading with his former lover Ria (Vedika Kapoor) to come back to him. We don’t see anything of the interaction, we only hear the voices of the discussion, while we are fed images of Armaan stewing in his car, listening to a sad song on repeat.
Both actors nail their respective delivery. Adlakha is pathetic – but in a way that comes across as slightly unnerving – particularly when repeating the assertion that he would have done anything to keep Ria in his life. At the same time, Ria is audibly walking a tightrope – determined to stand her ground, and steadfast in her refusal to just go back to whatever behavioural shortcomings forced her to leave; but very clearly holding back in the early stages. And the question as to why that might be becomes increasingly ominous as the scene unfolds.
Feeding into this, Nagpal’s dialogue is conspicuously ambiguous. For all his melancholic pleas and self-flagellation, it feels like there is something deeper Armaan is in denial of. At the same time, as angry as she is with Armaan’s refusal to accept her decision, Ria seems hesitant to bring up specific events, keeping the criticism general. What she says might seem acerbic – but anyone who has ever been in an argument in a relationship will know that years-old, weirdly specific bugbears have a habit of cropping up in the heat of the moment. So, what is she afraid of that is keeping these from coming to the fore?
Later that night, Armaan shuffles into his house – seemingly a broken man. In what is billed as a means of processing his trauma, he sits down at the kitchen table to write a letter setting out his feelings. To clear his head, and help him try and put the past behind him. But as the process unfolds, the grovelling and meek man of earlier appearances dissolves, the façade giving way to a hunched, bitter creature, giving us his best Dear Stan…
As the letter lurches into horrendous, misogynistic slurs – directed at both his former lovers, and his mother – what many of us already suspected is coming to fruition. The film then delivers a grotesque conclusion to its alleged soul-bearing session.
The social and political situation in India, which Letterheads emerges into, makes this a potentially incendiary piece of filmmaking. Violence and sexual abuse targeted at women has rarely been far from the headlines in recent years – earlier in 2024, a gang-rape of a tourist in the east of the country sparked mass protests, while the Modi government has attempted to pass laws permitting rape within marriage. As in America, in the UK and across Europe, India has seen a grim emboldening of men who regard women as sub-human, and who believe they have some kind of innate ownership of their bodies.
Armaan, for all his whining and moping, is the same kind of entitled incel that you will have no trouble finding scores of anywhere in the world at the moment. The fact that the film concludes with him apparently going unpunished for his abominable actions means it could very well be argued that at the very least, his crimes are being trivialised as something fit for cheap shock tactics. At worst, the film could be argued to sympathise with him in his quest to punish the women he believes have ‘wronged’ him.
This second point at least seems a stretch, though. Particularly as he goes to the fridge to pour himself a glass of milk – which he proceeds to dribble down his chin as his eyes swivel about the place. Armaan is clearly not someone we are supposed to relate to, or want to emulate (although however grotesque American Psycho made Patrick Bateman, the manosphere still manages to unironically treat him as their go-to icon). As to the first, it might also be argued that an eight-minute short does not have to tie up in a neat bow to convey a suitable moral judgement on a character like Armaan – or all that he represents. He is clearly the villain here, and everything he has fed us about his relationship is painted as thoroughly unreliable. Indeed, whether the opening confrontation ever took place – let alone whether it took place in the way he remembers – is now up for interpretation.
Whether the film does much to shift debate on women’s rights in India is unlikely. But it does at least seem to have identified who the problem is in this scenario. That’s a start for some people – and enough of one that perhaps Nagpal’s handling of this subject is just about justified.
As always with Saturday Matinees, the film will be available to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the 10th of August, until the end of the weekend, via our Saturday Matinees theatre page. You can give it your own score out of five there! As the film is still trying to gain access to other festivals, the page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE24 to access the film.
