By RACHEL SALTZ
Published: October 13, 2007
A fascinating blend of musical, melodrama and feminist fairy tale, “Laaga Chunari Mein Daag” shows Bollywood’s moral universe in transition.
The film follows the fortunes of Badki (Rani Mukherjee) and Chutki (Konkona Sen Sharma), sisters from a genteel Benares family with money problems and predatory relatives. When Badki leaves to find work in Bombay (as everyone in the film still calls the sin city currently known as Mumbai), “Laaga” really takes off.
There, Badki — with no diploma and no skills — becomes Natasha: a high-priced prostitute. The movie isn’t coy about this. “I’ve fallen from grace,” she says. “I can never come back.”
Chutki’s story is lighter. M.B.A. in hand, she joins her sister in the city, where she gets a job in advertising. Her first task is to sell Lux soap to the modern Indian woman. And who is that creature? As her boss (and future husband) discovers, Chutki herself — bright, spunky, self-assured — fits the bill.
Fallen women are a Bollywood staple. But Chutki won’t allow her sister to be shunned. Instead of keeping the stain a dark secret, Chutki insists on honesty and that the family reintegrate Badki.
Ms. Sharma hits all the right notes as Chutki, the film’s conscience and clown. Through her, “Laaga” rejects tragedy and embraces its musical comedy heart. The Hindi title — literally “a stain on my veil” — means “fallen woman.” But here Badki gets back up, becoming, with her sister, that special thing: the modern Indian woman.
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