Bollywood Dreams: The Dirty Picture's Ooh La La

I can't really believe this, but I've never seen a Bollywood movie all the way through.

My wife has seen plenty of them. She traveled in India for a month in the late 1990s, and therefore got a chance to experience Bollywood movies in Indian movie theaters - without subtitles or dubbing mind you. She really enjoyed them, and partly because they often are laid out in a formulaic way so that there is no mistaking what is happening in various parts of a Bollywood movie. And there are always the entertaining song and dance numbers. Some conventions you just know will happen - there will be no kissing so when it appears that a kiss is inevitable, suddenly the cast will break out in song. There will always be a moral, such as a rebellious woman will either be tamed by marriage or tamed by death.

I've seen movies by Indian directors, and movies about India. I've seen Slumdog Millionaire and many Mira Nair films and Deepa Mehta's Indian trilogy, but never an honest-to-God Bollywood spectacular.

But I've seen plenty of Bollywood numbers on video. In 1998 I traveled to Bangladesh and lived there for a month. Bangladeshi Television had one channel, so the rest of their television airwaves was flooded by Indian channels. One of the favorites was Indian MTV, and the videos shown on that channel were always song and dance numbers culled from Bollywood movies. I must say that I really enjoy watching them. The newer movies have music that ranges from electronica to driving percussion, and yet still that Indian sound anchored usually by a back and forth between a woman and a man in voices that sound like they could be wailing but are technically doing quite a lot. The dances always involve a lot of personnel, color, costumes and flirtatious glances between the two principles.

Today's video is a song called Ooh La La, and it is from a 2011 Bollywood production called The Dirty Picture. The movie is morality tale based on the life of a South Indian actress named Silk Smitha. Smitha died in 1996 at the age of 36, but she became one of the most sought-after Indian erotic actresses in history. She was apparently an accomplished actress and her non-erotic roles landed her critical acclaim, but because of her looks and her erotic success she was typecast into what some Indians considered "soft porn;" such roles often had her playing a secret agent wearing skimpy bikinis and beating up large, thuggish men. She had incredible audience-drawing power, such that one critic remarked that a film could be sold by the addition of a Smitha song. After trying to break into film production, and suffering financial problems, she apparently fell into depression, and her death at 36 is suspected to have been suicide by hanging.  

The Dirty Picture follows the life of an actress named Silk who breaks into movies by adding sex and spice, much to the chagrin of director who is saddled with her. She also has numerous affairs with men, and in the ends up an alcoholic chain smoker with many debts who is reduced to doing a porn film. Like the Silk of real life, she commits suicide at the end of the film. A sad tale to be sure, but what would such movies be without some drama, and part of the Bollywood formula is drama. I will have to make sure I see one to the end, and soon.