Both Ram Raju and Bheem are given female lovers as narrative charity, each woman burdened by an insurmountable distance - with Sita (Alia Bhatt), it is literal, and with Jenny (Olivia Morris), it is linguistic they do not share the same space or the same language.Īll the markers of the traditional love story are, instead, given to the men - a meet cute, a musical interlude intensifying affection, the exchange of a protective thread, a conflict, a chasm, a reunion.
There is no space for the feminine, elbowed out as it is by the male gayze. Perhaps, the two men, Ram Charan as Rama Raju and Jr NTR as Bheem, should have just had sex.įilms drumming masculinity and muscularity to the point of feminine redundance offer themselves as willing, submissive bodies to a queer perspective, like the Kannada gangster film Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahanam, like the Hindi bromance War, and the Tamil tickle-trickster film Kadaseela Biriyani. The kink of whipping your lover, the eros of undressing their feverish bodies, the intensity of feeling - both love and hate - between the leading men in RRR lends itself effortlessly to a queer reading of the homosocial as the homosexual. Queer Gaze is a monthly column where Prathyush Parasuraman examines traces of queerness in cinema and streaming - intended or unintended, studied or unstudied, reckless or exciting.
