This audacious film unspools in South India from the 70s to the 90s. In Western world terms, that's behind the times by at least 20 years. Fleeing an unwanted arranged marriage, small town girl Reshma (Vidya Balan) pitches herself out of a window headlong into an unimaginably wild ride in Madras—the big bad city. Like millions of Indians, she's mad for the movies and besotted with Suryakant, the longtime hero of cheesy South Indian B-movies. What distinguishes her is her determination to be an actress. 1970s middle-class India got voyeuristic thrills from ogling the undulating curves of overripe vamps within the security of darkened cinemas, but would never permit an acting career for its daughters. But Reshma's credo is with only one life to live, why think twice.
Despite the odds, Reshma gets her break in a dance scene. Ordered to sizzle by the choreographer, she offers up a scorching interpretation of sexual abandon. Watching the rushes, the artsy director of the film, Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) is sickened by Reshma's flagrant display and orders the sequence cut. On its first day of release, the film flops, but when Reshma's "hot" number is reinstated, it becomes a hit. Sex-starved men return to repeatedly watch the uncredited seductress.
The producer tracks her down; Reshma rechristened Silk, finds herself on set with her idol Suryakant, and becomes his lover. Seen in film after film with the most famous leading man, she has the tabloids bursting with lurid speculations of their affair. With a naughty wink, Silk enumerates the three factors guaranteeing a movie's success: entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. Believing sex to be first-rate entertainment, she offers the salivating public what it wants, but her lover remains out of reach. With a dowdy but proper wife and infant son, Surya presents a façade of respectability to the world, and Silk realizes the futility of hanging on.
She moves on to his younger brother Ramakant, a screen-writer, but scares him off with her utter intractability. Claiming to offer filmgoers novelty, a resentful Surya insists that newer girls be paired with him in forthcoming projects.
Disenchanted by male duplicity, Silk becomes erratic and unreliable in her professional life and watches her hard-earned success evaporate. A self-financed movie ruins her financially. In her dark days, she again encounters Abraham, the director from her first film. He has revised his world-view, accepting the only formula for a sure-fire hit is entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. He appreciates her bravery in living life without compromise, and starts seeking out her company. All Silk wants to do is work in the movies, but she has been deemed unemployable. Her looks and figure have dissipated from years of alcohol abuse, so—in her mind—it is the end of the line. This, ironically, just as Abraham concedes he has come to love her.
Vidya Balan's Silk is a force of nature—strong, yet vulnerable; fearful only of betraying her essential self. Balan offers a nuanced study of naïve but gutsy femininity devoid of self-pity. Silk, as Balan interprets her, is rambunctious and loves to shock, but she's never cheap. It's little touches that catapult this portrayal into greatness: her radiant smile upon catching herself in a studio mirror after Hair/Makeup & Wardrobe have wrought their magic on her for the first time, or the conspiratorial grin at a woman journalist who applauds her daring at an awards function—for the woman has guessed her MO, or her child-like glee at upstaging the same hypocritical journalist's party to celebrate an award won by denouncing Silk's shenanigans in print. Silk collects a wildly appreciative crowd by dancing on her car outside the scribe's home, while the police ineffectually try to calm the ruckus.
There's honesty and conviction in her Silk, even when the script can't resist the trope of the fallen woman nobly giving up a loving man because she might be a liability for him. Kudos to Vidya Balan on creating a memorable firebrand who burnt out way too soon.
Naseeruddin Shah has a barrel of fun with his aging leading-man Suryakant character, wearing shiny fabrics in clashing colors, numerous gold chains, a pencil-thin mustache, and a heart as jet black as his wigs. He is as corny in real life as in his money-spinning potboilers: on screen, he bounds into the frame, brandishing a diploma, to announce his "First Class, first" to an impossibly young screen mother. (The director exclaims delightedly: "Perfect take, Saar! So boyish!") Off-screen, Surya displays a connoisseur's pride in pointing out various ugly artifacts in his mansion during a photo-shoot. When fawning minions praise his brilliance, he shrugs with faux self-deprecation, "I am a genius, it's my curse." But Surya doesn't completely devolve into caricature; his spite and vindictiveness toward his former lover are all too human—there's nothing funny in it. He's prescient about trends, too: in the new films, he declares, we'll have the heroine do whatever the vamp did—that's something new for the public. And sure enough, leading ladies now bare abundant cleavage, sport ever-shorter skirts, and come on to the hero with nary a blush.
Emraan Hashmi (Abraham), Tushar Kapoor (Ramakant), Rajesh Sharma as the producer Selva Ganesh, and Shivani Tanskale as Suryakant's wife do fine work. Anju Mahendroo is elegantly vitriolic as the poison-penned scribe.
Director Milan Luthria and writer Rajat Arora have fashioned a hip, irreverent recreation of a lost era. Their film has cheeky wit, social satire, and at its heart, the tragedy of a woman lynched by the patriarchy for flaunting her sexual emancipation.
The story gallops, with a riotous soundtrack spurring it on—there's no retard to offer Silk momentary respite. In a bit of a cop-out, the ending has Silk ritually donning the tokens of bourgeois respectability: a traditional silk sari and a bindi. But luckily for them, Vidya Balan renders that lone misstep plausible. It's been days since my rendezvous with Silk, yet an exquisite melancholy lingers.
Despite the odds, Reshma gets her break in a dance scene. Ordered to sizzle by the choreographer, she offers up a scorching interpretation of sexual abandon. Watching the rushes, the artsy director of the film, Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) is sickened by Reshma's flagrant display and orders the sequence cut. On its first day of release, the film flops, but when Reshma's "hot" number is reinstated, it becomes a hit. Sex-starved men return to repeatedly watch the uncredited seductress.
The producer tracks her down; Reshma rechristened Silk, finds herself on set with her idol Suryakant, and becomes his lover. Seen in film after film with the most famous leading man, she has the tabloids bursting with lurid speculations of their affair. With a naughty wink, Silk enumerates the three factors guaranteeing a movie's success: entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. Believing sex to be first-rate entertainment, she offers the salivating public what it wants, but her lover remains out of reach. With a dowdy but proper wife and infant son, Surya presents a façade of respectability to the world, and Silk realizes the futility of hanging on.
She moves on to his younger brother Ramakant, a screen-writer, but scares him off with her utter intractability. Claiming to offer filmgoers novelty, a resentful Surya insists that newer girls be paired with him in forthcoming projects.
Disenchanted by male duplicity, Silk becomes erratic and unreliable in her professional life and watches her hard-earned success evaporate. A self-financed movie ruins her financially. In her dark days, she again encounters Abraham, the director from her first film. He has revised his world-view, accepting the only formula for a sure-fire hit is entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. He appreciates her bravery in living life without compromise, and starts seeking out her company. All Silk wants to do is work in the movies, but she has been deemed unemployable. Her looks and figure have dissipated from years of alcohol abuse, so—in her mind—it is the end of the line. This, ironically, just as Abraham concedes he has come to love her.
Vidya Balan's Silk is a force of nature—strong, yet vulnerable; fearful only of betraying her essential self. Balan offers a nuanced study of naïve but gutsy femininity devoid of self-pity. Silk, as Balan interprets her, is rambunctious and loves to shock, but she's never cheap. It's little touches that catapult this portrayal into greatness: her radiant smile upon catching herself in a studio mirror after Hair/Makeup & Wardrobe have wrought their magic on her for the first time, or the conspiratorial grin at a woman journalist who applauds her daring at an awards function—for the woman has guessed her MO, or her child-like glee at upstaging the same hypocritical journalist's party to celebrate an award won by denouncing Silk's shenanigans in print. Silk collects a wildly appreciative crowd by dancing on her car outside the scribe's home, while the police ineffectually try to calm the ruckus.
There's honesty and conviction in her Silk, even when the script can't resist the trope of the fallen woman nobly giving up a loving man because she might be a liability for him. Kudos to Vidya Balan on creating a memorable firebrand who burnt out way too soon.
Naseeruddin Shah has a barrel of fun with his aging leading-man Suryakant character, wearing shiny fabrics in clashing colors, numerous gold chains, a pencil-thin mustache, and a heart as jet black as his wigs. He is as corny in real life as in his money-spinning potboilers: on screen, he bounds into the frame, brandishing a diploma, to announce his "First Class, first" to an impossibly young screen mother. (The director exclaims delightedly: "Perfect take, Saar! So boyish!") Off-screen, Surya displays a connoisseur's pride in pointing out various ugly artifacts in his mansion during a photo-shoot. When fawning minions praise his brilliance, he shrugs with faux self-deprecation, "I am a genius, it's my curse." But Surya doesn't completely devolve into caricature; his spite and vindictiveness toward his former lover are all too human—there's nothing funny in it. He's prescient about trends, too: in the new films, he declares, we'll have the heroine do whatever the vamp did—that's something new for the public. And sure enough, leading ladies now bare abundant cleavage, sport ever-shorter skirts, and come on to the hero with nary a blush.
Emraan Hashmi (Abraham), Tushar Kapoor (Ramakant), Rajesh Sharma as the producer Selva Ganesh, and Shivani Tanskale as Suryakant's wife do fine work. Anju Mahendroo is elegantly vitriolic as the poison-penned scribe.
Director Milan Luthria and writer Rajat Arora have fashioned a hip, irreverent recreation of a lost era. Their film has cheeky wit, social satire, and at its heart, the tragedy of a woman lynched by the patriarchy for flaunting her sexual emancipation.
The story gallops, with a riotous soundtrack spurring it on—there's no retard to offer Silk momentary respite. In a bit of a cop-out, the ending has Silk ritually donning the tokens of bourgeois respectability: a traditional silk sari and a bindi. But luckily for them, Vidya Balan renders that lone misstep plausible. It's been days since my rendezvous with Silk, yet an exquisite melancholy lingers.