A WORLD OF UNMITIGATED DEBAUCI-IERV

Miss Lovely

STARRING: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Niharika Singh and Anil George WRIT ERS: Salim Khan and Javed

Akhtar DIR ECTOR: Ashim Ahluwalia

o aesthetically capture the scummy on screen in all its naked glory is not an easy task. Debutant director Ashim Ahluwalia has achieved a stirring and disturbing synthesis ofa documentary-styled narrative on the notdefunct world of horror-porn from the 1980s, and a conventional Hindi film love triangle (two brothers, one girl, tension, tension!)

The storytelling is not just unique, it is also extremely disturbing The characters do not follow the redemptive path from sl eaze to atonement. They remain till the end damned, doomed and despicable in their greed to capture femal e flesh in lascivious dose-ups

The lure of the leer is laid o ut with brutal directness The tale is a trap for the compromised But it's not a morality tale. The camera space between the characters and the audience is next to non - existent in Ahluwa l ia's narrative. And that's the highest compliment one can pay the cinematographer K U Mohanan and co-editors Paresh Kamdar and Ahluwal ia who have done their jobs so well they seem non-existent in the scheme of Ahluwalia's scathing sting operation on human depravity and uncontrollabl e sexual appetites

There is an unevenness about the narration which perfectly matches the smoky seedy mood of t h e story Barring Nihari ka Singh 's character who epitomises beauty in the sleazy cesspool, all the actors are captured in grotesque flabby close-ups Niharika looks al oof and detached from the sleaze. She seems to be playing the title role. But then, deception is the name of the grime

There is nothing pretty or lovely about Miss Lovely Scene after scene of cheesy titillation is piled on with little space for

Narrative Niceties

Clearly Ahluwalia knows this dark desperate ugly world He enters it fearlessly and shameless ly Emotionally and vis u all y the narrative remains married to the murky until the bitter shocking end.

The finale leaves us as sick in the pit of our stomach as the rest of the fi l m. These are characters who belong to the armpit of humanity

The four principa l parts are played with disconcerting scrupulousness by Niharika Singh, Anil George, Zeena Bhatia and last but not the 'leashed' Nawazuddin Siddiqui who continues to create compelling characters culled from dark desperate corners of the human condition.

Nawazuddin's Sonu Dugga l is a curiously untarnished soul trapped in a world of unmitigated debauchery His romance with the wannabe starl et Pinky (Niharika Singh) comes to an expectantly sticky trag ic end The bitter rage with which Nawazuddin confronts the betraya l of his innocent love for the girl is more

Shakespearean than you'd expect a fi l m of this nature to be

Loath it or l ove it, you've never seen anything like Miss Lovely. It builds a wor ld of v ici ous vices with its raw stock of stark visuals and elemental emotions. The sound design is del iberatel y hazy, going as it does from Asha Bhosle - R.D Burman in the opening cred its to incidental distant sounds of g i rls giggling in fake ecstasy and moaning in ersatz pleasure

The dark, sinister, sexy, dangerous and devastatingly lurid, the sleazy world ofBollywood's semi-porn scarefests is recreated i n a scarily new cinematic language

The view i n Miss Lovely may not be pretty but it is unfai lingly provocative and exhil arating This fi lm is not for the squeamish

Neither is life.

SUBHASH K. JHA