Film Review: ‘The Dirty Picture’

Director: Milan Luthria
Cast: Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah
Rating: ★★1/2

For her portrayal of Reshma aka South Indian film star Silk Smitha, Vidya Balan deserves every accolade in the book. She digs into the muck of her character’s life with both hands. In the glamour-filled days of Silk’s life, Balan sports a lascivious wink, an ample bosom, and outlandish costumes. She’s equally compelling in the dramatic moments, when demonstrating Silk’s insecurities about her acting abilities and her showbiz life.

Balan effortlessly conveys Silk’s iconic status, screen presence and saucy attitude. She is as sassy as she is beautiful, a wanton libertine and damaged martyr to male lust, a perky, young girl who sees nothing wrong with peeling off for the camera. No matter what contrived scenario filmmakers place her in—wearing trussed red robes with whips, frolicking with old men in faux cowboy attire, acting like a slutty schoolteacher—Silk’s smile remains as genuine and wholesome as sunshine. She doesn’t mind lecherous photographers who ogle sweatily at her. In fact, she enjoys posing for them.

The film makes it sound like Silk led a very interesting life, which is also why as a biopic, it is ultimately, disappointing. Because despite clocking in at more than two-and-a-half hours, there is barely any deconstruction of the sexual icon. Director Milan Luthria and writer Rajat Arora (the duo who brought us Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai) deliver the whos, whats and wheres of Silk’s story but little on the hows and whys. It’s a shallow recounting of events without theme or purpose.

The Dirty Picture covers a lot of ground, from Silk’s towering rise to titillation glory to the various men she courted, and her alcoholism and drug abuse. But the script just layers one event on top of the other, with little drama. Even Silk’s eventual downfall and bipolar outbursts play out without tension or trauma. There is the merest hint of sexual abuse when Silk was young, and the backstory of a subsequent child marriage. Surely those things (assuming they’re true) shaped her path in life, but the film introduces them only to subsequently ignore them. The award ceremony scene, which plays right before the interval, brings interesting parallels between the enforced restraint and caged sexuality of Indian audiences, but this too goes unexplored.

Yet, for all its shortcomings, The Dirty Picture sparkles when it comes to giving us a snapshot of 1980s Indian cinema. In one scene, megastar Surya (an incredible Naseeruddin Shah) hurls a currency note in the air, shoots it, and smirks as a bunch of coins fall on the floor. At its best, the film is an amazing recreation of a time when soft-core had just arrived in Indian cinema, pushed along by Silk and her journey to superstardom. But take it as a slice of smut, and it is sensationally dirty. Nearly every dialogue is laced with hilarious double entendres. Surya, when questioned about his philandering ways, says “Uparwale ne neeche itna kuch diya hai, to thoda batne mein kya harz hai.” He then proceeds to add, “Girls are like a government, you have to support them: kabhi left, kabhi right, kabhi centre.”

What’s worse is that some of the funny lines are attached to irritating “Ahhaa” sound effects. It doesn’t help that Tusshar Kapoor, who plays a writer and Surya’s younger brother, serves no function in the film other than to look completely baffled in a few random shots. But The Dirty Picture’s biggest misstep is that it never establishes the reasons behind Silk’s downfall. Instead, a majority of the second half is squandered in a needlessly frothy love story between Silk and a disgruntled arthouse filmmaker (Emraan Hashmi). One moment she’s at the top of her career and in the next, she is kicked off a movie set. What happened in between? There’s more to Silk than meets the eye but you wouldn’t know it from the affectless, pointless climax. Balan is so good that we’re convinced she could have easily handled a more probing character study of Silk Smitha. Sadly, Luthria and Arora never bother to examine Silk’s motivations or choices.