The Dirty Picture: Dirty but what a picture!

This film runs only on three things: Vidya Balan, Vidya Balan & Vidya Balan. It’s only her false modesty in this shamelessly dirty film that Balan calls it “entertainment, entertainment and enterinment.” And that’s the only subtlety too which this otherwise blatantly audacious film and its heroine can afford.

The promos of The Dirty Picture would lead you to think it’s a pure and simple boobs trap that Milind Luthra is luring you into. But then, you forget, if it is Silk Smitha and her boobs he or anyone else is hawking, they will sell and sell like hotcakes. And if you really did not know that it is Vidya Balan who is all Silk, the experience will, well, leave you gaping with gender no bar!

The Dirty Picture lives up to its carefully constructed reputation of being shamelessly, inordinately, completely and audaciously dirty. As soon as Vidya Balan lowers her cleavage to a close-up on the big screen, you know there is no scope here for the proverbial fig leaf.

It is Balan’s amazing sense of elan, wantonness and startling ease with her unapologetically sassy and sexy self that puts the film on rocket fuel.

The only thing that gives any kind of competition to this marauding sex siren played to the hilt by Balan is the dialogues that come out of her mouth (mostly unprintable). 

And despite the all-pervasice raunchiness which is as pumped up as Balan’s scooped up boobs, somehow you do not feel any sense of guilt at being an unabashed voyeur. The startling dignity that Balan inserts into her character of Silk is what stands out. She lives life on her terms; she is the biggest worshipper of her body assets; she cares two figs for morality and she exposes the hypocrisy of society by being even more lewd, obscene, X-rated, bawdy, erotic, filthy, foul-mouthed, gross, hardcore and soundly improper. 

Being all this and much more, her biggest asset is that she never stops to think, and when she does, she fails, falls and commits suicide.

Behind all this self-propulsion, is a poignant life which yearns for acceptance rather too privately, there is a girl who longs for love, a woman who desires acceptance -- but all this comes just when she is at the mouth of decline. That you will say has been the perennial story of the ageing diva in Bollywood, so what’s new. The new thing is that even in death, she is defaint and goes with a strange kind of inspirational self-belief.

This is Vidya Balan’s surest bid for Filmfare Best Actress Award in the popular category. It is also a juicy show of her turning from novice to veteran, from an actor taking tips on acting to, as Ekta Kapoor said, becoming a textbook of acting herself. 

From Hum Paanch on TV, to Parineeta, to Pa, to Ishq Kiya to The Dirty Picture, Balan is Silk all the way — she scripted her hourney to glory on her own terms, in very challenging roles, and with utmost commitment to drama. From here on, she is all that it is needed for potent cinema. And so what if that came through as a the viagra shot she is in The Ditry -- the risqué, explicit, smutty, suggestive diva who turned vulgairty on its head to create many a disciple and a worshipper, be it the hater turned lover Emraan Hashmi in the film, or the audience in general whose love for the shameful she exposes with so much naturalese.