Konkona: I want a box office hit

Asked what they want, box office or awards, many movie stars may be tempted to say, "both," but recently Konkona Sen Sharma bluntly told Karan Johar, "Box office."

The film-maker who has cast her as a writer who gives meaning to a slightly younger male (Ranbir Kapoor) in the admirable Wake Up Sid was interviewing her recently on his show. Awards, Konkona told him, she has in plenty.

It is not that she hasn't been featured in box-office hits such as Life in a Metro and Page 3 but those are small budget films (compared to an Akshay Kumar or a Shah Rukh Khan movie).

Now, it looks like she has another arthouse hit. Wake Up Sid, according to distributors UTV, has grossed a healthy $4.2 million worldwide in three days. In North America, its $350,000 gross smartly outbeats Do Knot Disturb which made $124,000. and the laughing stock of the season What's Your Raashee? continued its doomed run earning $237,000 in 10 days in North America.

Hers is an engaging role in Wake Up Sid, she says, adding that she plays a Bengali woman with insights into life. She has arrived in Mumbai to be a writer. She wants to do something new. Like a holiday, Sid asks her. No, she firmly answers, 'Like Life.'

The role is "not challenging" like her roles in several of her equally admired films, she says. "I did not have to have an accent as in Mr and Mrs Iyer," she says, referring to the film her mother Aparna Sen directed in 2002.

Konkona, 29, says that it is her best film. "I did not have to use a dialect as in Omakara," in her newest film, she continues.

Though Ranbir plays the title role and gets good amount of screen time, Ayan Mukerji, the director of Wake Up Sid readily admits that Konkona offers an incandescent performance.

Reviewers in India and abroad have noticed her work in the film.

In The New York Times, Rachel Saltz who liked the film and who declared Ayan Mukerji 'is a director to watch,' wrote: "Ms Sharma has made a specialty of characters like Aisha -- independent urban women, whose dreams involve careers as well as love.'

In the review which ran under the headline, Career Woman Helps a Man-Child Grow Up, Saltz added: 'Her Aisha is a nuanced creation -- ambitious, sympathetic, believable -- and Mr Mukerji, making his directorial debut, is right to let run away with the film.'

Konkona does not make a fuss in taking up a meaty role in what is generally seen as a commercial film (Aaja Nachle, for instance) but she is wary of directors who want to cast her only in certain kind of roles. One such director -- she won't name him -- approached her not long ago, telling her about his 'womanist' film. Of course, he meant, feminist film, she has said.

Konkona, who made her screen debut as a child in a TV film Indira in 1983 and soon followed it with her mother's film Picnic has acted in many of Aparna Sen's films. Konkona will soon be in a Bengali film her mother will be directing.

"It is about an actress whose career spans two decades from 1950," she says. "I play the younger version, and my mother the older version."

Working with her mother, she has said, is like going on a vacation where quite a few things are demanded from her (Konkona) as well as her mother. "We are like best friends, like sisters," she said. "A lot of what passes between us is non-verbal."

She admires her mother on many fronts but for herself, Konkona confesses, acting is enough for now.

"I have no plans to write a screenplay or direct a film," she says.