How dirty must the picture be?

Sept. 12, 2011 - PRLog -- How dirty must the picture be?
An increasingly assured actress thrusts her bosom in our face, making us, um, think


   Iwoke up to Vidya Balan’s breasts this morning. And I must confess to being sufficiently taken aback. The first theatrical trailer for her latest, Dirty Picture, has just hit screens, and it packs quite the oomphy punch. From all angles, it looks like the rollicking tale of an 80s femme fatale, stringing helplessly smitten men along while constantly, heavingly ensuring we never quite look at her eyes, however striking and doe-like they may well be. And yet this is a film about an icon of Southern cinema, the infamously irresistible Silk Smitha, a woman who enjoyed tremendous success before, very prematurely, taking her own life.
   The trailer doesn’t at all hint at the darkness in Silk’s story, and that is entirely director Milan Luthria’s prerogative. It might even work as a knockout punch, audiences coming in for the dhak-dhak, left dumbfounded by the profoundly depressing climax.
   However, a week or so after watching Ram Gopal Varma’s bizarre take on the Maria Susairaj murder case, in which the filmmaker seems pornographically obsessed with his protagonist’s thighs and is constantly working out how best to slide the camera up her skirt, I can’t help but wonder if this is the start of a new trend, one where reallife is used as an excuse to legitimise titillation.
   I’m not condemning the very idea (just yet, that is, since it could soon snowball into a bosomy-biopic inferno, given Bollywood’s extreme herdmentality) but find myself merely puzzled by how easy it seems: take a fascinating backstory and amp up the heat between the lines. The audiences, I say helpless to the obvious and sloppy barely-double entendre, will come. What comes of the person the film is based on, one in no position to complain, seems of no consequence. Cinema is about telling a story well enough to make viewers care, and this is certainly one effective, if somewhat brutal way, to make them care. By making them stare.
   In the case of Balan’s film, I agree that on-screen raunch was a huge and vital part of Silk’s story as the nautchgirl who spun film industries around her raw sexuality, but there is something about the itemsong-y aggressiveness of the promo and the poster that makes me fear it might be more exploitative than exploratory. I hope, of course, to be proven wrong by Mr Luthria’s film.
   It isn’t a Bollywood phenomenon at all, this. We’re finally, very belatedly getting started with biopics but Julia Roberts’ modest breast was engineered to several times its size for her Oscarwinning turn in Erin Brockovich, and currently the hyper-talented Michelle Williams, who plays Marilyn Monroe in the upcoming My Life With Marilyn makes a rather pneumatic appearance on the film’s poster.
   Using sex to sell the story of a real person is sensational and instantly impactful, sure, but seems perhaps a little too ‘easy’, somewhat like a stand-up comedian using an expletive to get a quick laugh. A laugh’s a laugh no matter how you earn it, of course, but like Jerry Seinfeld told Louis CK, “the fword is like a Corvette.” Which, as CK explained, only makes you feel good till you realize that Seinfeld, who never swears on stage and is probably the world’s richest and best-known comedian, collects Porsches and ‘Vettes are utterly beneath him.
   Drive whatever you will, gentlemen creators, but drive carefully.

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