#BingeRecommends: Varun Grover's KISS offers an insightful dive into the CBFC's controversial decision-making!

The recent outrage over Superman’s censored kissing scene highlights why Varun Grover’s KISS feels all the more relevant as it unpacks understanding CBFC’s decisions and how personal cinema can be!

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in India is under fire once again. This time, it’s for censoring a 33-second long kissing scene between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in the Indian release of a Superman film. Many people online have called out the hypocrisy of how films like Housefull 5 can get a U/A certificate despite containing double-meaning jokes and derogatory remarks, yet a brief, intimate moment in a superhero film is seen as too inappropriate to pass uncut. Though this isn’t the first time the CBFC has made headlines for its questionable choices. From digitally covering Florence Pugh’s nude scene with a black VFX dress in Oppenheimer, a film famously made without any special effects to changing a middle finger in a texting scene in F1 The Movie to a fist, the pattern is clear. English films, especially, often face cuts or edits simply because scenes of physical intimacy are viewed as “too sexual” for our so-called cultural values.

But if that’s the case, then Varun Grover’s 17-minute short film KISS, streaming on MUBI, offers a compelling counterpoint. It explores how on-screen intimacy isn’t just about what's being shown, but about what it evokes in the characters, and through them, in us. Inevitably arguing that cinema isn’t just for entertainment; it can also be deeply therapeutic, only if it was allowed to be.

Also Read: CBFC’s tryst with caste-based films raises bigger questions: Storytelling or sanitisation?

KISS follows filmmaker Sam (Adarsh Gourav) as he confronts two censor board members (Swanand Kirkire and Ashwath Bhatt). Though unnamed, the two men could easily stand in for the real-life moral police that so often interfere and torment filmmakers in the name of cultural preservation. The issue is a 28-second kissing scene between two men, one that they insist is problematic in the film. As they all rewatch the scene, something strange happens. Each person gets a different runtime for the kiss - 50 seconds, 2 minutes 25 seconds, even over three minutes. This Rashomon-like shift in perception reveals something deeper that the kiss lasts as long as it emotionally affects them. That old-school theatre becomes a kind of time-warped dystopian space, where feelings stretch or compress what’s seen on screen. And strangely, a film about 'an older version of oneself meeting the younger self in an attempt to heal the regret tied to their identity and ultimately falling in love' ends up revealing the unresolved traumas of these individuals' traumatic unresolved past. Traumas they’ve long carried as anger, guilt, or shame. As Sam is carrying unresolved trauma from discovering his father’s secret homosexuality. One of the board members recalls being publicly shamed by his teacher as a child for expressing love through a letter to his crush. And the third, who clocks the longest duration for the kiss, carries a darkness he isn’t yet ready to face.

But by the end, when the kiss is finally shown in its entirety, something shifts. Even he is moved. It reinforces the film’s central idea that cinema, like any art form, can serve as a mirror reflecting not just the story on screen, but buried emotions within us. Sometimes it disturbs us, sometimes it heals but whatever it is it definitely opens up a window to let the light in. 

The film also makes a nuanced point about the people behind censorship. They’re not villains, just human, shaped by their own traumas and biases. And maybe sometimes they are right, especially when the film is too problematic for its own good. But just as that's understandable, it’s equally important not to let those biases dictate decision-making. Hence, KISS argues that no moment in a film is dispensable as every second counts. As time becomes the film’s central metaphor with the constantly ticking clock, it serves as a reminder that every frame matters. And when we watch or censor a film, we’re not just judging it, we’re also interacting with it and sometimes, it pushes back. 

KISS is currently streaming on MUBI!

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