Bandit Queen Reviews

This harrowing, wilfully controversial epic tells the story of Phoolan Devi (Seema Biswas), the near-legendary leader of a gang of brigands who roamed north central India during the late 70s and early 80s; she became a folk hero after taking bloody revenge against the upper-caste men who raped her. The film opens in rural Uttar Pradesh in 1968, as 11-year-old Phoolan (Sunita Bhatt) is married off to a grown man (Aditya Srivastava). When Phoolan resists his sexual demands, he rapes and later abandons her. She returns to her village a social outcast. As an adult, she fends off an attempted rape by an upper-caste villager. Accused of various crimes by the village headmen, she is jailed, beaten and raped by police and guards and finally sold off to a local bandit chieftain (Anirudh Agarwal), who further abuses her. He is killed by his young lieutenant, Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey); he and Phoolan become lovers and co-leaders of a small but resourceful bandit gang. But after Vikram is murdered in his turn and Phoolan is brutally gang-raped, she forms her own gang and initiates a reign of terror against those who have caused her so much misery. Despite the opening title — "This is a true story" — the film is less a literal biography than an explication of the popular mythology surrounding Devi. As electrically portrayed by Biswas, she's a ferocious embodiment of shakti (feminine power) and an unforgettable figure of affronted womanhood. Production values are first-rate throughout, notably the mournful score by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and dazzling shots of the unearthly terrain of Chambral Valley. The real Phholan Devi, who parlayed her notoriety into a career in politics, was assassinated in 2001.