Film Impressions

REVIEW: Miss Lovely

THE REAL DIRTY PICTURE

There’s something disconcerting about Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely and it’s not just the grim environs in which his tale of C-movie lowlife is set. Locations more authentic one hasn’t seen in Hindi cinema — literally squeezing out every ounce of glamour from the city of dreams to expose its ugly underbelly — nor cinematography that employs deliberate tackiness to force the action in your face. K U Mohanan achieved a similar look in parts of Reema Kagti’s Talaash, especially the opening montage; only it was more tasteful and less disturbing than this audio-visual overload.

REVIEW: Dedh Ishqiya

LOVE IN THE TIMES OF MUSHAIRAS

In Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine Cate Blanchett plays a down-and-out former heiress surviving on a staple diet of vodka, Xanax, rage and self-pity. She talks to herself and is rude to everyone in sight. But the character's vulnerability cuts deep and as you loathe her selfishness you also feel terribly sorry for her. In Abhishek Chaubey's Dedh Ishqiya, Madhuri Dixit-Nene is Begum Para (the name has such a delicious old-world ring!) the widowed queen of Mehmudabad (somewhere in UP) presiding over a decrepit haveli, whom we see in a private moment of revulsion as she consumes a sedative to calm her nerves and furiously scratches herself out of a photo album. I was waiting for the actress to draw me into the character's pain with the same fragility that Blanchett does.

Sadly, it wasn't to be.