Hindi Film review
Johnson Thomas
Film: Miss Lovely
Miss Lovely Movie review: A rather dismal dark take
on Bollywood’s underbelly
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Niharika Singh, Anil
George, Zeena Bhatia, Sonal
Director: Ashim Ahluwalia
Rating: *
* *
A less than illuminating(too many dark and
un-satisfyingly lit sequences) saga about the dark and inhuman depravity
rampant in the back-end side of glitzy Bollywood. This is documentary filmmaker
Ashim (‘John and Jane’)Ahluwalia’s maiden attempt at feature cinema and he just
about makes the transition count. It’s
differently color coded. There’s a dark heaviness that hangs around
every sequence and even the supposedly well-lit ones do not make for a suitable
contrast. It’s a technique adopted keeping in mind the dreary, sordid world
that the film seeks to draw you into. Set in the late 1980’s , where the
back-enders of mainstream, glitzy, Bollywood sought to augment their living
through pornographic endeavors that eventually caused them to self-destruct.
It’s a film about exploitation and the underbelly of bollywood lies painfully
exposed.
For those who have seen that seamier side in Adarsh Nagar and Antop
hill, this film is definitely likely to raise nostalgic memories. For those who
are yet clueless, this could well be a revelation of sorts.
Miss Lovely actually started life as a non-fiction project before evolving
into a more artful kind of heavily stylized drama. Unfortunately,
the treatment is such that it is not in the least bit affecting. Ashim
Ahluwalia’s indulgence towards set-piece visuals framed in darkness and set in
realistic, harsh, unrelenting backdrops is a little heavy on the senses. This
film is neither mainstream, gimmicky or parallel in it’s treatment-rather, it’s
an art-house effort that seeks to present a dismal , unrelenting picture of the
sexploitative industry that sprung-up in the mid to late 80’s , catering to the
baser tastes of audiences starving for a regular diet of titillating naked
bodies and SEX.
The dramatic heft is missing though. Spanning the
years from 1986 to ’92, a time when
the low-lying semi-porn, porn industry gained renewed life, the film centres
around two brothers and unequal partners in crime, Vicky(Anil George) and
Sonu(Nawazzuddin Siddiqui) wannabe Bollywood producers who bide their time
before the xought after ‘Big’ time, with cheap sex and horror fill-ups made on
shoe-string budgets situated in dismal shady surroundings. Vicky is the
master-mind of the outfit and he’s sleazy and opportunistic and uses his
dim-wit brother Sonu to facilitate most of his carnal sexploits. In the film’s
most defining scene Sonu suddenly turns over –into a more aggressive avenger
calling attention to the biggest dramatic movement in this otherwise comatose
representation.
This
film manages an accurate visual capture of that disreputable subculture but it’s not equally evocative or immersive. The widescreen lensing of Mohanan is mostly grotesque and
visually demanding – so though it manages to capture Bombay’s seamy underbelly,
it does so in a fashion that is quite unedifying. Shots are created through
screens, windows and wafting plumes of smoke- which leaves the viewer with much
less than a complete picture. The production design is remarkably eloquent
though. The color-faded Kodak stock and 1980s costumes and hairstyles create a
recognizably world converging towards infamy.
There’s a distance that springs up right from the
opening scene, between the audience and the film, that stays right through it’s
runtime. So the involvement is at best rudimentary. Performances are all
remarkably underplayed so you are unlikely to find any melodrama or heightened
emotions on display here. This film is mainly for those who have the time and
are willing to try something different from the run-of-the-mill!
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