Starring: Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor

Directed by Milan Luthria

Recently, former supermodel Elle Macpherson – referred to as The Body in high-fashion circles – was instructed by Italian Vogue, with more than a touch of schadenfreude, to move over and make way for some young thing called Karlie Kloss who has been declared, rather unimaginatively, The (new) Body. This has nothing to do with the film I’m reviewing here of course, except to suggest that in instances where a woman’s physical being is treated as a commodity, it has an apparently short shelf life, not only expendable but also easily and unceremoniously replaced. This is just one of the excremental facts of life that come to mind when watching The Dirty Picture, Milan Luthria’s lively but equally discomfiting follow-up to the glamorously gritty Once Upon A Time In Mumbai.

(Very) loosely based on the rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of 1980s South Indian filmi sex siren Silk Smitha, the film ably demonstrates Luthria’s strengths as a film-maker, the most obvious of which is his knack for locating the ballsiest, no-frills elements of his story and magnifying those in fairly broad cinematic strokes. More often than not, in favouring sensation over subtext, he does somewhat overshoot the heart of the tale, making him more Mickey Spillane than Joseph Conrad, but this also lends his work a certain disarming honesty that works especially well in The Dirty Picture.

Reshma (Balan) runs away from her village with dreams of being a film star. She quickly realises though that for her kind of woman, the only way into the movies is through her ample cleavage. Undeterred, she asserts herself before she can be made a victim, capitalising on (but therefore also controlling) her body as her ticket to stardom, albeit in the form of soft-core sexploitation cinema. But stardom is stardom, never mind how it comes about. Now re-christened Silk, she catches the eye of Southern superstar Suryakant (Shah) and sparks fly, both on- and off-screen, his marital status notwithstanding. Her lover’s brother (Kapoor) is also smitten and – misguidedly – tries to make an honest woman of her. The only man seemingly immune to her charms is ‘serious’ filmmaker Abraham (Hashmi) whose art house sensibilities are offended by her crass, sensationalist ones. Silk also realises soon enough that though she has made it, the nature of her work will always keep her as an outcast both within the industry as well as in life, ogled, used but never truly accepted. As friends and fame start to abandon her and look towards greener, leaner and younger pastures Silk hits a downward spiral.

Perhaps the most admirable aspect of how Luthria has framed Silk’s story is that despite the lurid subject matter, the innuendo-heavy dialogue and the flamboyant narrative style, it is never exploitative or sleazy. On the contrary, the film is squarely in its protagonist’s corner, never less than sympathetic to her and also to the larger issues at play. Silk is part of a world where men’s attitudes dictate the lives of women; women who must be desirable but not desirous, sexy but not sexual, and certainly not in possession of their destinies or even their own bodies.

If a woman is provocative, it is her dignity that will get tarnished, and the men who leer at her will do so without consequence. And if she oversteps her pre-defined place in society, then she’d best be prepared to be a pariah, forever relegated to the peripheries. That we identify with such a potentially polarizing central figure as Silk is due in no small part to Balan’s astonishing performance — she is funny, she is fiery, she is utterly fearless. At once vulnerable and steely, the actress sheds not only her inhibitions but also the accoutrements of the Bollywood glamour masquerade, courageously piling on the weight and then displaying the results without a shred of coyness or vanity. It is a tour de force that helps us to forgive the film’s narrative inconsistencies and lack of nuance.

Cult

Bhumika [1977] Based on the memoirs of 1940s Marathi stage and screen star Hansa Wadkar, Shyam Benegal’s haunting film features a star-making turn from Smita Patil.

Current

Rockstar Further ruminations on the cost of fame, with Ranbir Kapoor as the troubled protagonist.

Coming Attraction

Heroine [2012] Madhur Bhandarkar, of ‘Fashion’ infamy, will direct Kareena Kapoor in this exposé on the Hindi film industry.