Garish makeup, a territorial flower horn, a Godfather-esque pig head, narrow minds, and even narrower lanes—Shameless unfolds in a gritty, kitschy, and ruthless world.
We find ourselves in a dimly lit washroom, shrouded in dubious lighting and acts. On the bed lies a naked policeman, his uniform disheveled, with a knife lodged into him. This is where we first encounter Renuka (Anasuya Sengupta), a sex worker and one of our main protagonists. Attempting to flee the scene, her sunken eyes and roughened skin tell a silent story of hardship. As she moves from a red-lit alley to a blue-lit brothel staircase, we sense a fleeting reprieve from the danger relentlessly shadowing her. With that, Konstantin Bojanov (Writer, Director) sets the stage for the chaos about to unravel.
Having escaped from New Delhi to Mumbai, Renuka immediately seeks out the nearest red-light district to resume her income. Enter Devika (Omara Shetty), a doe-eyed 17-year-old girl whose initiation into this generational trade is eagerly awaited by powerful men. After her elder sister leaves to follow the tradition, a lonely Devika is drawn to Renuka, the new stranger in town. Their connection is fast and intense, an illicit spark igniting amid an industry run by predatory men, a tunnel-visioned matriarch, and the relentless pursuit of money. What unfolds is a tumultuous escape from deeply ingrained exploitation and the desperate scarcity of light in both their lives.
Chaos Centralised
The film reveals a stark hierarchy within sex work. On one side of the road are the general sex workers, stigmatized and looked down upon; on the other side is a hereditary house of practitioners performing the same labor yet regarded as “superior” due to the religious significance ascribed to their work. This caste-based, brahminical framework not only legitimizes their exploitation but also commodifies a lineage of women, embedding oppression within a system that valorizes sex work when tied to temple rituals and tradition.
Clad in stylish silk shirts and trousers, Renuka is a Muslim woman who has renamed herself after a Hindu goddess to navigate her world with greater ease. Devika, meanwhile, hides behind layers of clothing and fishtail braids, a modest attempt to shield herself from men’s predatory gaze. Renuka is alone in the world, while Devika’s mother (Auroshikha Dey) and grandmother (Mita Vashisht) are with her, albeit as complicit guides, grooming her for entry into the generational business—a haunting reflection of internalized oppression. Renuka has confronted and accepted the wrongs of patriarchy, while Devika remains naive and cautious; they are worlds apart in experience. Yet both women, who have known only conditional love, find solace in each other’s gentle tenderness, and we can’t help but root for them through each chaotic phase of their journey.
No Country For Women?
As Konstantin attempts to tackle multiple themes within this world of sex work and systemic oppression, his portrayal of women’s agency—or lack thereof—stands out, but reveals certain gaps. The narrative splits the profession into “organized” and “unorganized” forms, with Devika’s family representing the structured, matriarchal side. We see her mother enacting a rigid code of conduct with clients, seemingly complicit in this cycle of exploitation. However, the film’s failure to delve into the complexities that bind Devika’s mother to this system reduces her to a two-dimensional character, with little indication of any inner conflict or protective instinct toward her daughter. Could she, in fact, be grappling with her own limited ways of shielding Devika, perhaps wanting to educate her about bodily autonomy or even question the religious structures that perpetuate their exploitation? Instead, the portrayal sidelines these possible nuances, leaving her a passive enforcer of oppressive traditions rather than a mother navigating the painful choice between compliance and defiance.
This portrayal highlights the caste-based dynamics at play, revealing how brahmanical frameworks not only legitimize but also perpetuate systems of generational exploitation. In an interview with Priyanka Singh for Feminism in India, Nrithya Pillai, a dancer and educator from the Isai Vellalar community, articulates how these hierarchies were socially engineered under the guise of “devadasi” traditions, marking women as property in a feudal setup that controlled their lives through ritualistic practices like the pottu kattudal, or marking ceremony. “The savarna narrative,” Pillai explains, “focuses on the temple narrative, in that the devadasis were dedicated to temples. So, they called them temple dancers, which in itself is slightly problematic.” By limiting the scope to this “temple” origin story, she argues, the brahmanical revivalist movement cast women from hereditary dancing communities as mere courtesans, stripping them of their agency, land, and access to performing arts—effectively erasing their broader social and economic roles and reducing them to the stigmatized label of “prostitute.”
In Shameless, Devika’s family echoes this feudal model, wherein the hereditary, “organized” side of sex work is granted legitimacy solely due to its association with religious rituals and tradition. As Pillai notes, women of this lineage were forced back into caste-endogamous marriages, compelled to overcompensate for their identities in an attempt to be “respectable.” By exploring Devika’s mother’s struggles and revealing the reality of her confinement within this hierarchy, the film makes an important attempt to address the complexities of her situation. However, one might wonder if it achieves authenticity without community consultation in the writing process. While the film certainly aims to capture the experiences of Indian sex workers, there is a risk that this approach may lead to an exoticized portrayal that misses out on fully representing their nuanced battle against a deeply ingrained caste system. This raises the question of what a more direct critique of caste-based oppression might look like within the narrative.
What Do They Imagine As Light?
The dingy rooms adorned with faded posters of ‘90s heroines and chipped wall putty don’t offer much hope; they’re simply, commercialized spaces for pleasure. The setup seems bleak and the viewer is quickly made to realize the importance of having a source of light. For some, it serves as a means to abuse substances, while for others, it provides a moment of contemplation, as they fixate on a burning matchstick. The couple seeks out light in third spaces—such as theaters, an abandoned crime scene, and a terrace—only to find themselves trapped, constantly reminded of their inevitable fate.
Where Do We Go From Here?
As the film comes to its end, I can’t help but ask what would they’ve become if they had a second chance at life—a question Renu poses as they get to know each other. Would Devika pursue her dream of becoming a rapper? And what about Renu? Maybe she wouldn’t become a rapper, but would she finally get to live openly as the sapphic lover that she is!
It’s A Man’s World And We’re Living In It
At 1 hour and 55 minutes, the film builds an intense, often uncomfortable tension throughout. Scenes of assault linger beyond what feels bearable, the stark age gap remains impossible to ignore, and moments of intimacy feel purely physical and painfully brief. The exploitation of Devika and her lineage of women by this generational household is not explicitly explored as caste-based. This feels like an oversight, especially considering the material is shaped through the lens of a white person’s perspective, which adds a layer of unease.
Anasuya On Navigating The Intersections
Anasuya Sengupta captivated our attention in every frame that she graced as a foul-mouthed, self-aware sex worker on the run, making me eagerly anticipate her toothy smile on screen as she punches and gets punched by rules. Meanwhile Omara Shetty’s depiction of meek Devika unraveling her youth, left me shaking my head at every naive mistake she made. At the MAMI screening of Shameless, I got the opportunity to ask the main leads how they navigated the complicated layers of queerness, class, and trauma. Anusuya replied, “Of course, we knew our characters were queer, that sensibility came in. We saw it as a love story, a story of hope and despair before anything else.”
To witness a queer love story intertwined with class struggle, political corruption, and get disturbed by dissent in a Mumbai theatre was a delight, I hope you get to experience it too!
