Critic's Rating: ★★★★
Cast: Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor
Direction: Milan Luthria
Genre: Drama
Duration: 2 hours 20 minutes
Avg Readers Rating: ★★★★
Story: Reshma ( Vidya Balan),
a small town girl with dreams of stardom in her eyes, sets out for
Chennai, with nothing but her passion to stir her on. After the usual
period of struggle and rejections, she gets her break as an item girl
who's got the most sensuous moves in town. It doesn't take her long to
storm the box office as Silk, the sex symbol who's driving a whole
generation crazy with her oomph. The industry too can't stay immune to
her earthy charms and her list of worshipers -- and lovers -- keeps
multiplying, until it's downhill time. Will simpleton Silk be able to
survive the rigours of a heartless work place that discards faster than
it accepts?
Movie Review:
All she had was her well endowed body, her in-your-face sexuality, her
seductive moves and her rock hard confidence to carry her through a
world that was more than willing to exploit a lone woman, seeking
sustenance in a man's world. That was enough to transform Reshma into
Silk, a storm that refused to be quelled by anything or anybody.
Determined to take on the industry single-handedly and carve a niche for
herself as a sex symbol in a hypocritical world, Silk was the steroid
shot that sent the world in a tizzy. Journalists and holier-than-thou
art film makers like Abraham (Emraan Hashmi), hysterical women's groups
and the ubiquitous moral police branded her the scum of the earth. But
her legion fans were ready to lay their lives for her and the industry
heroes, like Suryakant ( Naseeruddin Shah)
couldn't keep their eyes and hands off her. One dirty picture followed
another and name, fame and success peaked to unimaginable heights for
our girl from nowhere who unabashedly lived out her dreams. Her survival
policy: savour the bouquets, ignore the brickbats. Life was literally
on song.
So
where did the problem lie? It lay in the duplicity of a world which was
hungering for sex, but was ashamed to acknowledge this primordial need.
So that, serenading Silk was okay in the darkness of the auditorium or
behind closed bedroom doors. But accepting her as part of the social
pecking order was taboo, for Silk, in a sick society, was a synonym for
dirt. Did Silk care? Of course, she did, although she gave the
impression she gave a damn to the moral custodians and the double
standards of society. But reality began to pinch -- and really hurt --
when her mother shut the door on her face, journalists, hungry for her
interview otherwise, refused to entertain her in their page 3 parties
and her lover (Naseeruddin Shah), who a minute ago was showering her
with compliments, shunted her to the bathroom when his wife unexpectedly
arrived. She tried to hide her pain through binge drinking and by
changing her lovers ( Tusshar Kapoor), but the sense of rejection just refused to go away.
Partially
responsible for her angst too was the arrogance that stars acquire with
the onrush of success. One by one, she began to lose her friends in the
industry and work stopped coming her way due to her cocky attitude.
Didn't take long for the superstar to hit the road to destruction and
end up as a sorry picture of failure and ruin. In this decrepit state --
the fate of most erstwhile Bollywood heroines -- her only friend was
the man who hated her the most, Emraan Hashmi. But was it already too late to resuscitate a broken soul....
The Dirty Picture
is essentially Vidya Balan's film, all the way. She gives a towering
performance as the protagonist who remains unapologetic about her life
till the very end. The high point of her act is the fact that despite
portraying a sex bomb, her sexuality never ever gets vulgar and crude.
Instead, there is an endearing quality to her attempts to shock and awe a
staid society that thrives on the fake. Her tour de force act however
doesn't throw the male leads into the shadows. They manage to hold their
own in full measure, despite the relative meagerness of their roles.
Also, it is the naughty dialogues (Rajat Arora) of the film which add
immense flavour to the proceedings. It's a no-holds-barred screenplay
which rightly refuses to treat sex as a four letter word. Kudos to Milan
Luthria for handling such a controversial theme with such sensitivity
and boldness.
The Dirty Picture is definitely not only your film
for the week, but is a seminal work that will be studied in feminist
discourses.
