Split Wide Open

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1999

Split Wide Open
Dev Benegal
INDIA, 1999
104 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Tropicfilm/ gMG-Crescendo
Producer: Anuradha Parikh
Screenplay: Farrukh Dhondy, based oncan original story by Dev Benegal and Upamanya Chaterjee Cinematographer: Sukumar Jatania
Editor: Renu Saluja
Production Designer: Anuradha Parikh
Sound: Resul Pookutty
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Principal Cast: Rahul Bose, Laila Rouass, Shivaji Satham, Ayesha Dharker, Kiran Nagarkar
Print Production: Tropicfilm

Dev Benegal’s sexy, fast-paced comedy of class conflict and capitalism in full bloom is an absolute delight. This is no surprise, as the film reunites the team of English, August, a major sensation in our India Now! programme a few years ago. It pits the new India of cell phones, fancy cars and a burgeoning middle class against the better-known India of impoverished and exploited street urchins and caste strictures. Split Wide Open is also a boisterous love letter to Bombay, the crazy Manhattan of the sub-continent, in which anything and everything happens at a deliriously fast pace. Yet, at every turn, the film examines the (often horrifying) moral conundrums rapid social change engenders.

KP is a hustling small-time businessman working for the local mafia as their water man. He unlocks the taps for the city’s poor (for a price) and sells questionable Evian water to the wealthy. He is devoted to Didi, his adopted ten-year-old sister, who earns a meagre living selling flowers at traffic lights. He gets advice and love from a gay Christian Brother who brought him up and taught him English.

Nan has just returned to India from London, where she was raised. She is the new host of an American-style talk show called “Split Wide Open,” in which people, in darkness, confess to their secret sexual lives. The show becomes a big hit but Nan feels it lacks something that would give the show greater authenticity.

When KP crosses the Water Godfather, he is beaten and thrown out of work. In the meantime, Didi has disappeared. While searching for her, KP meets Nan and they begin an odd courtship that could never have happened in the India of the recent past.

While it deals with some pretty heavy issues, Split Wide Open retains a resolutely light and graceful pace. Rahul Bose, back from English, August, brings a sweet, cheeky sexuality to this film that celebrates life, love and the characters that make life worth living.
—Noah Cowan