Shabana Azmi opens up on shooting intimate scenes, says 'Nandita kept her finger on my lips..'

Shabana Azmi featured in Fire, an Indo-Canadian love story directed by Deepa Mehta in 1996, the film proudly and out loud portrayed same-sex relationships. Talking about the film, Shabana Azmi recently opened up about doing intimate love making scenes in the movie. She called it difficult and recalled what all happened on the first day of shooting those challenging scenes.

Shabana Azmi opens up on shooting intimate scenes in Fire

Shabana said in a recent chat with Radio Nasha ¡°It was very difficult¡­ I didn¡¯t know Nandita at that time. On the very first day of shoot, Deepa asked us to rehearse the love-making scene. Both Nandita and I were not used to doing such scenes, so while rehearsing it, Nandita kept her finger on my lips, and it didn¡¯t come out as romantic."

She added that Deepa shouted that she didn¡¯t ask her to brush her teeth. "It was very awkward for both of us to shoot such scenes." She went on to add, ¡°But, Deepa made sure there were not more people than both of us, her, and the cameraman. She created a safe environment, and the film was not exploitative."

For the unversed, the movie is mostly based on the 1942 story "Lihaaf" by Ismat Chughtai. A lesbian romance is shown in the movie which is one of the first popular Bollywood films to openly depict homosexual relationships. Fire is the first part of Mehta's Elements trilogy; it is succeeded by Earth (1998) and Water (2005).

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