Image and Artistry
When Kapadia made her comeback to movies, she faced constant comparison to her Bobby days. According to Jyotika Virdi, author of the book The Cinematic Imagination, Kapadia trajectory is "different from that of any female Hindi film star", and she "turned every disadvantage to her advantage." Virdi mentioned Kapadia's forthright manner as having a major contribution to her career: "Speaking candidly to the press, she and the reporters plotted her life's narrative from the innocent teenager snared into an impossible marriage to the emergence of a mature 'woman with experience.'" Virdi also noted Kapadia for "fighting her way to the top, preferring to perform roles she described as serious and exacting rather than flippant and unchallenging," calling her parts in Aitbaar (1985), Kaash (1987) and Drishti (1990) as roles "where she drew from the well of her own experience."
Kapadia is known for her assertive and moody nature; during the making of Janbaaz (1986), director Feroz Khan remarked, "No other girl has so much of pent-up aggression." Journalist Bhawana Somaaya, who conducted a series of interviews with her during the 1980s, stated, "She's a strange bundle of contradictions. Her moods change in a jiffy." According to some critics, this approach has sometimes been at the cost of professional opportunities as "her unpredictable nature and moods have distanced many well wishers". In reply to this, she said, "I am moody by nature. But I have never consciously hurt anyone." According to Shobha Dé, Kapadia "hates being 'surveyed' and she finds herself in that unenviable situation all the time."
Mahesh Bhatt, with whom she first worked in Kaash (1987), remarked that Kapadia "has gone through so much in her life that she need not read up the text books of method acting to play a real woman." Speaking of her venture into art cinema years later, Bhatt commended her for not turning into "a victim of her own success" by refusing to become "a part of the money-making machine". Mrinal Sen, who directed her in Antareen (1994), compared her to Sophia Loren and described her face as "a landscape of desolation". According to Drishti (1990) director Govind Nihalani, Kapadia is "genuinely interested in doing serious work, something that challenges her talent." Following her success with Rudaali, a 1993 edition of Asiaweek reported that by this time Kapadia had long been "a critic's darling".
Dinesh Raheja from Rediff stated that Kapadia's involvement in art films happened at a time when she "exhausted her appetite for playing the pretty prop in hero-oriented films", arguing that they "honed Dimple's talent for lending fine striations to complex emotions." According to Raheja, Kapadia's casting in Dil Chahta Hai and Leela, in which she played "an older woman who is the object of a younger man's affection" served as "a kind of tribute to her eternal beauty." M.L. Dhawan from The Tribune commented, "All those who have been following Dimple Kapadia's career from Bobby, Lekin and Rudaali will assert that she is more talented than glamorous." Ranjan Das Gupta calls her "an instinctive actress, spontaneous and intelligent" but he notes that her beauty is "her asset as well as limitation". Kapadia describes herself as "a competent actress yet to deliver her best".
Read more about this topic: Dimple Kapadia
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