There’s one thing Bad Newz deserves credit for – who’d have imagined that one day the term “heteropaternal superfecundation” would be used in a mainstream Hindi film!
Directed by Anand Tiwari and scripted by Ishita Moitra and Tarun Dudeja, Bad Newz gets points for originality, even though it just so happens that the Brazilian web series Desperate Lies, on the same subject, is being streaming on Netflix. The film is a spiritual sequel to Good Newwz (2019), in which IVF samples get exchanged and two women end up with the wrong foetuses. Does that mean that a pregnancy universe is on the way? It’s like lobbing a bomb in an overpopulated country.
The medical term mentioned above describes the rare occurrence of a woman bearing twins with different fathers, which is the predicament in which the film’s leading lady Saloni (Triptii Dimri) finds herself. As a character rightly says, Saloni cannot tell whether her story is a tragedy or a comedy, Which is something Bad Newz grapples with too.
An ambitious chef who dreams of winning a prestigious Meraki star, Saloni is steered off course by the persistent wooing by Akhil (Vicky Kaushal), who runs a fast food joint. Once she marries Akhil – there are some steamy honeymoon scenes – she realises that his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) will always be the third wheel and that Akhil’s idea of romance is turning up at her place of work with kitschy gifts and unbridled Punjabi enthusiasm.
Saloni ends up meeting Gurbir (Ammy Virk), with a contrite Akhil hovering around. Thus she becomes pregnant after two instances of unprotected sex and bears twins fathered by two different men, both of whom definitely wants his own kid.
For an Indian film, it is commendable that the woman is not judged at any point. It’s the men who resort to desperate measures to impress Saloni and win a test of manhood they have set for themselves.
Because their unborn children are also involved, they resort to mean one-upmanship. In this stretch, the film gets funny and also makes points about male competitiveness and immaturity. When the men first meet, both of them compete to pick up a book – a male version of the famous Mere Mehboob scene – with romantic music and sultry glances. But that path is not explored further.
Although the centre of this bitterly comic contest is a woman, the story is actually about two entitled brats who eventually understand what it means to be a man and a father. After going “mine, mine” they have to concede that the decision about the births and future is not theirs to make.
It’s a pity then that Indian films cannot see motherhood without eventually succumbing to melodrama. Families join the fray with all the attendant fuss and bother. Saloni is in the difficult position of having to choose between the two men. Nobody even goes into whether the infants will be told about their paternity when they grow up.
Triptii Dimri brings freshness to the role and a softness to a tough character. Ammy Virk is sweetly charming, but it’s Vicky Kaushal who gets to play the loud Punjabi romantic as wicked and slightly tragic. Kaushal gets the full character arc from selfish mama’s boy to a man wise beyond his own comprehension. After tossing up a novel idea, the film may go haywire, but Kaushal never misses a step.
