Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar is a safety lecture for men. Bobby Deol plays a struggling television actor in Mumbai who meets a woman through a dating app. They spend time together, have sex, and then the relationship begins to sour. She becomes increasingly possessive and obsessive. He grows uncomfortable. Eventually, he does what millions of people in the age of Tinder and Bumble do when a relationship becomes too complicated — he ghosts her, blocks her number, and moves on.
Then she files a rape case against him.The rest of Bandar follows the destruction that follows. Bobby Deol’s character Samar is arrested, jailed and swallowed by a legal system that seems indifferent to whether he is guilty or innocent. The film leaves little doubt about where its sympathies lie. This is not a story about a misunderstood woman or a murky consent dispute. It is a story about a man whose life is ruined by a woman the film portrays as manipulative, unstable and vindictive.
Now, women have spent generations being warned about men. Don’t trust strangers. Don’t go home with someone you barely know. Don’t be out with a man late, don’t drink with them. Don’t assume that a charming man is a safe man. Entire cultures have been built around teaching women how to identify danger before it is too late.The interesting thing about Bandar is that it flips the direction of that warning. The film asks what happens when a man ignores the red flags.The woman Samar becomes involved with is introduced as intensely emotional, impulsive and unpredictable. She becomes attached almost immediately. She does not respect boundaries. Every warning sign is visible. Yet he overlooks them because, like many people do, he assumes the situation is manageable with a simple click of a button.It isn’t.The male psychopath
