A weighty issue out of the closet

Double XL

Hindi (Netflix)

Director: Sataramm Ramani

Cast: Huma Qureshi, Sonakshi Sinha, Zaheer Iqbal

Rating: 4/5

We all know the trope. The main character is thin and pretty. The large woman on screen is a walking joke — the sidekick, the comic relief. We demand laughs and self-depreciation from her for the common decency we may return.

So, let’s hear it, loud and long, for ‘Double XL’ – the trending film on Netflix that dares to bare a few truths about plus-sized women in the movies and the media: Plus-sized women are not a source of comic relief, they are not a crutch meant to make the heroine look more hot, they are not lazy or dumb, not unfashionable and certainly not miserable, unhealthy, dead or presumably dying if they do not go on that diet now!

In pop culture, it’s refreshing to watch an honest representation onscreen of women with interesting dreams, thriving careers, leadership roles and successful relationships, weight be damned.

Take a bow, Huma Qureshi, for setting the screen ablaze. Be it her roof-top demolition of the ‘dulha’ with a ball-bearing ‘dukaan’ in Meerut, her interview with the Haryana Hurricane, or her meltdown in a sports broadcast firm’s office, Huma, as Rajashri Trivedi, is simply top class.

The film also scores for its inside jokes and its casting. Zaheer Iqbal as Zorawar Rehmani and Mahat Raghavendra as Srikanth Sreevardhan are particularly good, and 84-year-old Shubha Kote excels as the sassy ‘daadi’.

Sonakshi Sinha as Saira Khanna, the Delhi designer with a loser boyfriend, is good in parts but gets screechy and preachy far too often. Perhaps it’s the cliched writing of her lines that lets her down.

Whatever its hiccups, ‘Double XL’ deserves an extra-large round of applause for bringing a weighty issue out of the closet and treating it with empathy and wit. For giving all content creators in movies, especially those in the Karan Johar camp, some useful reframes: plus-sized women are not failed thin women, and their dreams are not to be dictated by their size.