Jan 31, 2005 05:03 PM
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(Updated Jan 31, 2005 05:03 PM)
Madhur Bhandarkar made a point with Chandni Bar. All sat up and took notice of this erstwhile assistant of Ramgopal Verma. He then made a well-intentioned Satta but it backfired as the movie was whimsical and juvenile in treatment. Aan ? well the less said about it the better. He is back now with Page 3. And how!
Bhandarkar has crafted an extremely original and hard hitting piece on the hip and happening. And how!
Madhavi Sharma (Konkana Sen) is a Page 3 journalist. She rubs shoulders with the who?s who of the trendy brigade ((Soni Razdan, Maya Alagh, Navni Parihar, Suchitra Pillai, Kunika, Anju Mahendru, Rehaan Engineer, etc). The movie begins with a Gujarati businessman hiring a PR agency to help him make it to the Page 3 of the tabloids.
The movie is dotted with a variety of characters who drink and party in the evening. These guys n gals do not fail to liaison on even events like the funeral. Madhavi stays in a rented apartment with Pearl an airhostess (Sandhya Mridul) and Gayatri, a wannabe actress. All?s well till Gayatri gets pregnant. Madhavi writes a scathing piece against her beau, superstar Rohit but is pulled back by her editor. At this point she faces the question ? am I actually a journalist? Is covering the Page 3 beat the real thing? On her insistence she is transferred to the crime beat. She covers riots, bomb blasts and then ?. Something that changes her perspective. What she discovers is closely linked to a Page 3 regular and will change her life forever.
Bhandarkar has created a wonderful movie, at least the content is different and courageous. Where he does falter is in the depiction of the Page 3 types. His characterizations are too black and white. The script does seem to be a tad judgmental. But that?s about it. He has written a very intriguing screenplay and dotted its landscape with myriad characters.
The hypocrisies and insecurities of the glamour world are very well outlined here. He covers all controversial topics here ? homosexuality, casting couch, sexual exploitation of children, social networking at funerals etc ? and emerges trumps.
Konkana Sen as Madhavi and Boman Irani as the editor of the newspaper she works for are extremely believable and endearing. They both come up trumps in this extremely hard hitting fare. Page 3 is definitely the ?it? piece of cinema one was expecting from Madhur Bhandarkar.
