Film Impressions: The Dirty Picture

VA VA VOOM VIDYA

Even today, the Indian movie business is male dominated, women get far less money and respect than men do, and their career spans are shamefully short. In the eighties, in conservative Tamil Nadu, the male chauvinism was much worse and so was the hypocrisy. Kudos to Milan Luthria and Ekta Kapoor for attempting a film like The Dirty Picture, when hardly anyone makes films with female protagonists. Sadly, most such films also disappoint in their portrayal of the woman. It can’t be helped, perhaps, that filmmakers also come out of the patriarchal system that the movie industry is, and it would be very tough for them to take a financial risk over a film that overturns conventional ideas.

Hamming it up royally—Shah with Balan in The Dirty Picture

Continue reading "REVIEW: The Dirty Picture (2)" »

IT'S DIRTY ALRIGHT

Would Hollywood make a film about say Marilyn Monroe (coincidentally, My Week With Marilyn released in the US and UK just last week), call the protagonist Marilyn, use her blonde bombshell image to sell the film, release it on her birthday, and then cheekily put a disclaimer describing it a 'work of fiction bearing no resemblance to anyone living or dead'? Of course not. But hey, we don't imitate Hollywood. We're the original vultures who have mass orgies over dead people's bodies. And this one's on Southern star Silk Smitha, the sum of whose life is reduced to raunchy dances (and sorrily lacking the sheer brashness and audacity of Silk's original numbers) sex, booze and sleaze, alternating between objectifying her and struggling to portray her as a real human being with rare spunk.