LegXpression: An Experimental Drama On Work and Worth

Indrajit Das’ LegXpression attempts a comparison of intimacy; in one case undertaken for freely, in another, for professional obligation. A six-minute experimental narrative set in the streets of Kolkata, the film seeks and observes, as the title suggests, the language of legs. Hurrying feet; steps languid in wait; the ungainly gait of uncomfortable heels; crossed ankles betraying absent elegance. Much has been said of hands as minds; here is an examination of our other set of extremities.

With a camera shuffling between ground level and knee level, the film introduces us to two women restraining themselves to waiting while the city is abuzz under the thrum of feet in motion. A working class woman condemned to society’s bottom rung (Suchita Biswas) and a woman just well-off enough to date men of the same social strata which produces the former’s clientele (Soma Bardhan). Two sides, thus, of the same uneasy coin. The film makes this point well: though they share the pavement for several minutes together with nothing to do but wait, neither speaks to the other. An impossible divide qualified by their relationship to men. In fact, the film epigraphs itself with a quote from Engels: “Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of labour.”

One set of male feet makes its way through the city towards the second woman. He is the Beau (Vineet Patel) to her Belle. Just behind Belle, as though her unconscious, the sex worker receives, at various intervals, her own visitors. A pantomime of romance in the same way that work under late capitalism is a pantomime of passion. What they say is inaccessible to us: the film is silent (to that effect it even uses intertitles in the silent era fashion). Belle’s feet often turn halfway behind, a threshold she maintains between knowledge and acknowledgement. Maybe she even glances at the other woman. But they deny each other words. Solidarity is a distant dream.

And so LegXpression locates character in legs and feet. Even crow’s feet—a fortuitous encounter and oblique reference in a narrative emphasising women’s worth under capitalist patriarchy—patter in, busy building itself a nest. Mood, purpose, hesitation, interest, dejection: like hands, anything can reveal themselves through our feet. Our bodies are alive with thought.

Watch LegXpression Short Film Trailer