Neha Dhupia ‘steps out’ as a producer

The  lockdown and its aftermath has created a cinema of trauma. Some of it like Adam Mason’s American film Songbird is purely exploitative. On the other hand, the Fahad Faazil film C U Soon in Malayalam used the lockdown scenario of bleak digitalism to telling, chilling effect.

Neha Dhupia’s 11-minute film is not short of integrity. It is a sincere if somewhat self conscious little story about an on onging interaction between a psychiatrist played by Neha Dhupia (who also co-produces the slim novella on film) and her visibly hyper  young  patient, played with a watch-me-if-you-can forcefulness by Dev Dutt.

As the two converse on video call, a rather harrowing  narrative of lockdown pressures unfolds and  somewhere during those ten minutes the onus of opening up wounds that are never going to heal even after the Virus is vanquished, falls on the psychiatrist as she reveals herself to be a victim of domestic abuse.

One nagging question that kind of coloured my interest in the film was, how does the  jobless, aimless boy afford these therapy sessions, unless his shrink is doing it for free?

Neha Dhupia, always  an underrated actor, holds the camera well from her stationary situation in the plot. The movement is entirely emotional, never physical. The camera  never gets fidgety. It allows the two protagonists to probe each other’s hurt in repose.

Though the plot is  a bit heavy-handed for a short film, director Hridaye Nagpal keep the narrative in the brisk mode with shots of a bloody basin and the sound of of  whiskey being poured intervening to keep us from getting bored.

Step Out is a laudable effort to tell a sincere story about how the last year has affected  our domestic relationships. It’s  a story that needed to be told. And I am glad  Neha Dhupia is telling it.