SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khan’s romantic films gave Bollywood some of its most memorable love stories. But when Radhika Apte revisited the films she enjoyed growing up, she found herself questioning what they had taught her about romance.
In a recent interview, the actress said she has always been a huge SRK fan. Watching some of his older films again, however, left her “really taken aback.” What once looked like a hero determined to win someone’s heart now struck her as a man refusing to accept a woman’s answer.
“When a woman says no, it’s never taken as no,” Radhika said. She recalled how chasing a woman was presented as romance, adding that young viewers, including herself, grew up wanting the kind of attention they saw on screen. Looking back, she found that reaction shocking.
Radhika also discussed how older Hindi films shaped her understanding of desire. If a character kept pursuing a woman despite her refusal, the story often treated his persistence as proof of love. She said those ideas can stay with viewers long after the film ends, affecting how they recognise attention and poor treatment in their own lives.
The conversation went beyond SRK’s films. Radhika questioned the male gaze in Raj Kapoor’s cinema, saying women were frequently sexualised while their feelings received far less attention. Filmmaker Shakun Batra, who joined the discussion, spoke about how films from that period approached desire and how future audiences may also find flaws in the stories being made today.
Radhika acknowledged that Hindi cinema has changed over the years, though she feels it still has further to go. Her comments have brought an uncomfortable question back to some much-loved Bollywood romances: when the heroine says no, does the story let her mean it?
Radhika and Shakun have worked on separate segments of Lust Stories 3, which releases on Netflix on September 18.
SOURCE : SIASAT
