With Korean culture taking over all of us, and the rising popularity of Korean content, it is not unexpected that our Bollywood filmmakers might take a sneak peek into Kdramas and films, and find inspiration from there. When the trailer of Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar’s Badhaai Do released on January 25, some sections of the audience were quick to spot its similarities with a commercially successful South Korean queer film Two Weddings and a Funeral.
When we reached out to director Harshvardhan Kulkarni for his comment, he open-heartedly welcomed our questions and helped clarify that his film has nothing to do with the Kim Jho Kwang-soo directorial. “I heard about this story today from a comment somebody had left on YouTube that the film looks like something of that sort," he said continuing that the concept of lavender marriage is as common as elopement weddings.
“The concept here is lavender marriage, which is like the ‘bhaag ke shaadi kiya hai’. There will be thousands of films in that genre. Similarly, there might be other films on lavender marriage but we have not heard about it. I didn’t know about the film till someone told me about it today. So we are definitely not inspired by any film. And when you see the characters, you will realise that it’s extremely original and the story is organically told. The concept, yes, has been existing for a long time now."
For the ones not familiar with the term, lavender marriage essentially is a marriage of convenience or a mixed-orientation wedding done to hide one’s (or both partners’) sexual orientation and save themselves from social stigma.
When asked about the influence of Korean culture and whether the hunter director has personally indulged in those, he gave an answer we were not expecting. He revealed to us that when Korean films had started gaining popularity in India, most of it was pirated, and the filmmaker who remained true to his art, missed out on several good productions as he is not a believer in piracy.
“In our film institute, we used to watch a lot of films but the Korean thing hadn’t taken off then. And as soon as I came out of the institute, the Korean films had this surge and were all seen on DVDs, VCDs and VHS tapes. They were all pirated and I was anti-piracy. That was my policy. So I ended up not watching any film because they were all pirated or downloaded or uploaded on torrent sites. I only watched the films that came on legit platforms and that started happening now. So now I’m kind of exploring but not everything is available," the Hunterrr
director said.
However, he added that other members of his family, like his daughter and niece are fans of all things Korean and follow their music, food and culture.
Coming back to Badhaai Do, the film will have its theatrical release on February 11.
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