Movie Review : That Girl in Yellow Boots

[amazon_link id=”B005GTOE8E” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Rating : 2.5/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2011
Running time : 2 hours
Director : Anurag Kashyap
Cast : Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Gulshan Devaiah, Puja Saroop, Prashant Prakash
Kid rating : A, R

THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS : GRITTY!

That girl is Kalki Koechlin playing Ruth, an British-Indian girl slumming it out in India in the hopes of locating her missing father. Ruth lives in a small, seedy Mumbai flat, and earns a living working in a “spa” giving massages and more. Over time, she has learned to be street-smart, but still regains her core of goodness, even when surrounded by users like her druggie boyfriend. Life has a tedium – she works, she goes home. Intermittently she gets leads about her father, but they go nowhere. And so it goes, until she actually locates his address . . .

Propelled by the quality of Kashyap’s earlier work, I went to see the film at the theatre, where it was surprisingly running – most low-budget “indie” type Hindi films will not even make it to the theater here. There were four people in the hall, including the husband and I. (Everyone else I assume, was watching Bodyguard.) The film was shot well, and told it’s story, such as it was, with panache. The characters are etched in great detail, and Kashyap takes care to present them from different angles creating them as fully-fleshed, real people. Kalki is a strong actress, balancing out Ruth’s innocence and street-smarts nicely. Gulshan Devaiya, as Kannadiga gangster Chitiappa, and Puja Swaroop as the massage parlor’s garrulous receptionist are wonderful.

The film didn’t work for me though because I fail to see what it tried to achieve. It wasn’t feel-good. It was sad and depressing, and had elements of perversity and sordidness. A sad story without an end goal. I wasn’t emotionally attached or affected, and there weren’t any take-aways. Koechlin’s character, Ruth, was compelling, but loses strength, because she isn’t a protagonist caught between a rock and a hard place, but a young adult with serious self-esteem issues. Not that it makes the situation any better – it’s still dismal, perverted and distressing; it just makes it hard to empathize with her. You know that her view of reality is warped by the deficiency within, so you pity her, but are not invested in her life.

Knowing Anurag Kashyap’s penchant for gritty reality, you know that there is no silver lining to this story. And as the film trundles towards the in-escapable truth, and as Ruth realises, what you have as a viewer long foreseen, the film comes to a sad, sordid end.

Unless you are in the mood for some self-flagellation, I cannot recommend this one.