Saturday, September 26, 2015
Calendar Girls
Unsave The Date
Get this… a new actress is shooting in a studio
when her secretary excitedly whispers to her that someone important is on the
neighbouring set.
She rushes over and “Oh-my-Gods” over Madhur
Bhandarkar! She praises his films, and
flatters him; he is not at all embarrassed, either in the scene, or as the
director of the film in which he pays tribute to himself. If that is not tacky,
what is!
Calendar Girls is just like Bhandarkar’s other
films (Page 3, Fashion, Heroine), in which he sets out to reveal the grime
under the glamour.
Five girls are selected to model for a calendar
(obviously referring to the Kingfisher calendar), which is supposedly a sign of
achievement and power. How posing in tiny bikinis is empowering it’s hard to
say, but the girls see it as a means to bigger things—modelling, films,
marrying into wealth. So much so that they introduce themselves not as “model”
but as “calendar girl.” As if that is a career by itself!
Mayuri from Rohtak (Ruhi Singh) gets a toehold
into the movies with the help of a secretary, the likes of whom have long been
replaced by talent management companies. Nazneen (Avani Modi) from Pakistan is
forced to become an “escort girl”;
Nandita from Hyderabad (Akanksha Puri) marries a rich playboy and is
informed by his father that philandering is a family tradition. Paroma from Kolkata (Satarupa Pyne) gets
sucked into the murky world of gambling and match-fixing. The only one who gets
out relatively undamaged, is Sharon from Goa (Kyra Dutt) who becomes a TV
anchor. (There is a laugh-out-loud moment when she is informed that her entertainment
show is so successful that she is being sent to Delhi to become a real
journalist—since when are anchors reading off teleprompters called journalists?)
The film has all the sleazy clichés who exploit
these young women—creepy politicians, businessmen and diplomats, shady talent
managers and madams, opportunistic boyfriends—but not one scene with any depth
or fresh insight. Satire is in broad
strokes, like the actress being paid to attend a funeral where she is pawed by
slimy old men.
The plot is superficial, the dialogue is awful
and the film shoddy in every way. Not one of the girls can act—maybe that was
not the criterion for casting them.
Bhandarkar could pass off his previous cut-rate cautionary tales as
exposes, Calendar Girls is just a crass, feel-bad film.
Labels: Cinemaah
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