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critique


movie:Page 3 - director: Madhur Bhandarkar


In a month of unfulfilled "vaada"s, pointless "elaan"s and a kitsch "kisna", when I sat down to watch Page 3, I was ready to take on anything; I was in for a surprise.

The movie starts of with a series of parties thrown by mumbai socialites and we get the usual dope on their hypocritical lifestyle devoid of all meaning and plenty of socialite "bash"ing with a good enough dash of tongue-in-cheek humour. In fact for the first forty-five minutes, you find the movie mimic Page-3 itself - blatantly pointless and yet bearable - and then, slowly but surely, it gets a life of its own.

In the next hour and half, madhavi, the journalist and we move from the casting couch to a suicide and a funeral gathering, to a bomb blast, to drug-peddling,police encounters and child abuse, in a emotional roller-coaster ride as the director tears down every facade and rips open mumbai's underbelly. She will be betrayed by the editor she respects, the friend she trusts and the guy she falls in love with; she will learn that nothing is what it seems and finally she will learn to take all of it in her stride, savour the satire in all this with a smile and wait...for that one chance to bring out the truth- in the right fashion.

Sandhya Mridul is brilliant as Pearl, Boman Irani as the editor and Konkona Sen the protagonist slip into their characters with characteristic ease; combined with the soulful rendering of "kitne ajeeb rishtey" by asha bhonsle and finally a commnedable execution of a good concept, this is surely a movie you cannot miss. Kudos to Madhur Bhandarkar!


- moviebuff

1 Comments:

At 3:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That definetely was a good movie. Anything in hindi these days that can hold my attention throughout has got a to be a good film. Konkana seemed to handle the role of a dissatisfied journalist quite sensitively, no overacting in this film. Though Madhur said in an interview he would have sold the film better if he had Kareena in the lead. Yekh, God forbid.
Money obviously wasn't the issue here, and I'm glad it showed through. Plus, I'm glad she didn't run into to the arms of her crime journalist colleague to make up for her boyfriends betrayal, and found it within herself to move on. This, in a way, was a truly feminist film...
I'm surprised.

 

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