Good girls, recast

If you grew up watching 1980s films, you may remember a time when Juhi Chawla and Supriya Pathak - one working in mainstream cinema, the other largely in the "parallel" circuit - were different versions of the fresh-faced girl next door. They didn't always play virginal stereotypes (Pathak had a few casually sexy moments as a modern-day Subhadra on honeymoon with her Arjuna in Shyam Benegal's Kalyug) but generally speaking they were comforting presences. It has been a bit of a jolt then - but a pleasing one - to see these actors tear up those images with relish in recent films.

In the past two years, Pathak played a self-serving chief minister in Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai and a domineering matriarch in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Goliyon ki Raasleela Ram Leela. The form of those two films is very different - Shanghai has an austerely gloomy tone while Ram Leela is baroque and over the top - but in both there are scenes where lighting and shot composition make her look like a black widow spider feeding on everyone around her. The performances are terrifying too: whether she is assessing a potential son-in-law, or emerging from the shadows to menace a conscientious bureaucrat, she is a revelation.

Still, one knows that Pathak came from a theatre background and worked with directors whose films were more character-oriented than personality-driven; so once you've got over the initial surprise, it isn't so unusual to see her experimenting. Juhi Chawla, on the other hand, was from the commercial-cinema star system, and the bubbly-sweetheart image is hard to break away from. I wasn't a Qayamat se Qayamat Tak fan - I was 11 when the film came out in 1988, and had better things to do with my time than watch a saccharine teen romance - but I did register Chawla's chocolatey presence. I wonder how I would have reacted to a time traveller's revelation that 25 years hence this Rashmi (the "cutie", so to speak, in QSQT) would play a politician who sets a "generous" pay-off to cover up a rape and then says - in a room filled with male lackeys - that the victim should consider herself lucky this happened just before an election.

That is just one of many wicked things Chawla does in Soumik Sen's Gulaab Gang. Her performance as the predatory Sumitra Devi has many well-conceived moments where the eyes suddenly flash, a lip curls and one sees psychotic currents beneath a calm surface. And there is no sugarcoating. It would have been easy to give Sumitra a weepy back-story where she is made a victim of patriarchal expectations. But you don't get the impression that she has been corrupted by power; it is almost as if she sought power because it would allow her to play out her innate dark impulses.

The casting of Pathak and Chawla in such roles is a reminder that today's filmmakers are creating fresh opportunities for middle-aged performers, and having some fun in the process. But it is also a reminder of the self-reflexivity of mainstream cinema: writers and directors who were once passionate movie-buffs are inevitably tempted to overturn elements from the films they grew up watching. When I interviewed Banerjee once, it was clear that the thought of casting Pathak and the genial Farooque Shaikh in negative roles in Shanghai had been invigorating for him. Similarly, Gulaab Gang writer-director Sen (who, in full disclosure, is a former colleague) must have had strong ideas about how to use Chawla in a contemporary masala film that is a homage to the Bollywood that she began her career in.

Of course, this sort of self-referencing allows the dedicated viewer to form his own associations too. With Chawla's QSQT co-star Aamir Khan cast as a scowling bank robber in Dhoom 3 a few months ago, what fun it would be to have a post-mod QSQT sequel in which it turns out that Rashmi and Raj survived to discover that love was not a bed of roses after all, then eventually went their separate ways and set about wreaking vengeance on the world. I know I'd queue up early to watch that film.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer