First Look: Vidya Balan as Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture

The Dirty Picture  promotional campaign is ready to roll with a front-page Bombay Times exclusive unveiling of lead actor Vidya Balan’s look in the film. The interview alongside is customary, except for a quote on the film being ‘Moulin Rouge meets Himmatwaala’- but more on that later.  

The knotted blouse, floral skirt and the entire demeanour is reminiscent of Julie and to some extent Dimple Kapadia as Bobby. There is an overbearing sense of gaudy. The look is coquettish on the whole, eyes wide open and an apprehensive biting of nails conveying an innocent sense of seduction. The hip over the hand, highlighting the womanly bulge of flesh over the skirt, serves as the contradiction to the girlishness of the facial expression.

Just to give you a quick preview, Vidya Balan portrays Southern siren Silk Smitha, best to known to us Bollywood babies as the dusky, voluptuous seductress who attempted to lure the hapless Kamal Haasan into her folds (pun quite appropriately intended) in the 1983 film Sadma. The Dirty Picture is a supposed biopic of the lady who rose to fame as a ‘soft porn actress’ in the south and was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

The preliminary publicity effort has gone into boosting awareness of Silk while simultaneously building an intrigue factor around her persona and the kind of life she led. Now portraying that in a ‘Moulin Rouge meets Himmatwaala’ set-up throws up a couple of interesting thoughts.  While the movie earlier seemed to give the vibe of a real-life drama, Balan talks of it as a mix between an international romantic musical and an 80s masala flick. The common factor between the two: high on cheesy dialogues, clichés and melodrama. While the film calls for the cheesy dialogues (totally timing dependant) because that was the zeitgeist of the era in which Silk Smitha was at her peak and we can expect the melodrama from director Milan Luthria (Once Upon A Time In Mumbai, Kacche Dhaage) – we are not too welcoming on the idea of clichés.

Having said that, the producer of the film is an expert at marketing real-life inspired dramas. Take a look at the box office collections of Once Upon A Time in Mumbai and Raginni MMS (still in theatres) – proof of two rather ordinary films making it big on the strength of their marketing campaign.

The Dirty Picture, directed by Milan Luthria and produced by Balaji Motion Pictures is slated to release on November 10^th, 2011.

We Want to Know: Intrigued or unaffected ? What do you think of Vidya’s look in The Dirty Picture?