At the first glance, the film’s promos with a fat Vidya Balan dancing boldly with a man twice her age – Naseeruddin Shah – brought a smile to my face.
Then, the rhythm of ‘ooh laa laa, ooh laa laa’ and the fancy sets took me back in time to the smashing 80s.
Polka dots, coloured mud urns, curly hair, fat heroines, actors with fat bellies, apples and lemons in the fields, beads in the hair and the bodice and dancing in the rain dominated the films in those glorious years. And here, ‘The Dirty Picture’ had all this. Bingo!
It’s a simple story of an ambitious girl who learns the tricks of the trade at the right age and rises to stardom. It’s a true story of the South Indian actress Silk Smitha (2 December 1960 – 23 September 1996) who got a break in 1979 as SILK in a Tamil movie Vandi Chakkaram and then there was no looking back for her.
‘The Dirty Picture’ shows how dirty the world can be and how vulnerable people can be. Vidya Balan, I think, has done a fantastic job and shed all inhibitions. She has made history with this film and will be remembered always for this. Or has she opened the flood-gates for female-dominated films in the Bollywood?
It’s a tough job to portray a real life character as people tend to compare. But, she has shed vanity and nailed it to perfection. Naseeruddin as a lecherous established actor is excellent as always. Beginning from where he ended in Ishqiya, he’s drooling over women throughout in the movie and is as dirty as can be.
What I loved about this girl Silk is that she learns to survive in this dirty world and never gives up till the end.
‘The Dirty Picture’ has created ripples in the industry. It could have been a little more dirty.
