Thank you for Coming review: Bhoomi Pednekar’s sex comedy bats for self-worth without humour or consistency

'Thank You For Coming' released in theatres on Friday.

“Admiyon ko hoti na ye problem toh bawaal mach gya hota. Hartaale [general strike] hori hoti,” the gynaecologist mother of a young woman, who has never experienced an orgasm, says in Thank you for Coming. It’s a disarming, if slightly blunt way of painting the subjugation of female anatomy by the all-encasing litany of masculinity. When the language of communication, the form and the factor that dictates worth, is written in the male tongue, it becomes impossible to snatch from it an image of womanhood that is comprehensively your own. Thank you for Coming isn’t as funny as it can at times be unintentionally moving. It tries hard to evoke the silly, bro-gang chemistry of sex comedies that is the domain of men, but it rarely finds that perfect fit of sensual and sensitive, crass but also cathartic. It has a decent message, but takes an underwhelming route to expressing it.

Bhoomi Pednekar plays Kanika, a 30-something woman residing in Delhi. Kanika has been raised by a single mother(Natasha Rastogi), with whom she lives, alongside a snarky but conservative grandmother. Kanika’s birthday exhorts her to consider the fact that she has never experienced an orgasm, as an abomination. Of her fairly long list of ex-boyfriends some have failed to perform, some have refused to participate while others have scarred in ways even her adult self fails to compute. Of these the suavest is played by Anil Kapoor, referred to here as ‘Professor’, a man who name-drops Gulzar and poetry like the punch-drunk image of euphoria, most wet dreams possibly commence with. Kapoor charmingly plays an ageing man whose back gives out every times he senses his spine throb with excitement. Part of the esoteric list, is the typical Delhi brat, the gender curious crossdresser and the benevolent manipulator.

Kanika also has two friends in Tina (Shibani Bedi) and Pallavi(Dolly Singh) who indulge her discontentment and help shape her petty retaliations. At one point they gift her a bag full of sex toys. To contrast the expansive list of unreliable boyfriends, looming as an embalming spectre is Jeevan Anand, played by the commendable Pradhuman Singh. Anand is a well-to-do business heir to an entitled family who keeps his arms and excitement to himself. Even when she lustily throws herself at him, he restrains himself out of his own moral conditioning. Frustrated by her lack of action Kanika decides to give into Anand’s honeyed pursuit of a predictable happily-ever-after. On the night of their nuptials, Kanika finally has that rapturous experience — an orgasm. Except she wakes up not knowing who it was with.

Directed by Karan Boolani Thank you for Coming starts off as a sex dramedy before spelunking into a self-pitying exploration of gender and isolation that eventually turns into a hazy, awkward, whodunit of sorts. For some reason the protagonist and her two friends try to zero in on the identity of the man who gave Kanika that elusive night of pleasure, as opposed to padding her anxiety by eulogising the guilt she carries. Her self-doubt has crippled Kanika to the point that the feels neither entitled to pleasure nor the perversion we are all as sexual being provisioned with. Such is the enslavement of the female mind, the film argues, that it considers even bodily sensation through the lens of obligation. Again, the ideas are crystal but the tools used to carve it, unconvincing.

Pednekar is delightful as the self-pitying Kanika. A mix of melodrama and resentment she is convinced her household of single women, represents a cursed cycle of loneliness and cowardice. Even hard-won freedoms, ironically, translate to inglorious precipices from where life looks thin and unsatisfying, compared to everything it could be. A corny ‘pre-wedding video’ on the night of their engagement played to the iconic intro of Ekta Kapoor’s Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi attains that profound, satirical air of self-correction. For everything Kapoor enabled at the turn of the millennium she has now produced, or at least commissioned, startling if raw, ripostes. But like everything else she has helped modernise, the grammar of the raunchy female comedy can’t quite find its feet or fit just yet.

Despite Kapoor’s excellent, self-deprecating cameo, and a bunch of gags and dialogues that hit their mark, Boolan’s film reeks of foundational weaknesses. Foremost of which is the missing chemistry between the three friends. There is the expected banter, the sneaky competitive edge and shrieking confessional wisdoms shared amongst women but when cracks threaten to foil their bond, precious little feels at stake. A teenage girl’s sexual exploitation becomes the prompt for the routine lecture at the end, but the quarrels, the distrust and the carnal misery (and mystery) that precedes it can’t quite thicken the stew. In fact, the big reveal about Kanika’s landmark night is a bit of a sterilising cop-out. That said, there can’t be enough of these films, for the sake of eventually one of them hitting the spot that us men boorishly assume, we have the map to.