That Girl in Yellow Boots

One of the key protagonists of New Age Indian Cinema,Anurag Kashyap returns with his another unusual film with a strange title THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS, which has already won critical acclaim in many film festivals abroad. As per his reputation of a daringly different film- maker, Anurag gives you exactly what was expected from him, a path breaking, bold and disturbing, realistic film which mainly calls for a strictly adult viewing.

With his own stylish shot taking techniques and sequences, this time Anurag goes into the filthy world of a local massage parlor of Mumbai, where you are offered pleasure services, a little more than just a massage. In clear words, here is something which you have never seen before in an Indian mainstream movie ever. And to be precise you can easily call it 'A Soft Porn' too served in the name of New Age Indian Cinema to the audience, minus the visual depiction of the term.

Here I really don't mean that it's a bad film. THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS is undoubtedly, a perfect example of a powerful controversial cinema which takes into the dark real world of oral sex, drug addiction and child abuse. It is a journey of a girl who is in search of both her own self and her lost father, who she thinks, is the only person in the world still loving her.

The film starts off sarcastically, revealing the silly work ethics of a government office dealing with foreigners in a real stupid manner and then it moves into a different world of drugs, sex and love all of a sudden. The director even takes you into Pune's OSHO Commune with the girl enquiring about her father, who has written a letter to her recently from there and he also shows a glimpse of OSHO's discourse running on a TVin one of the film's sequences. However the director's purpose of using this reference remains unclear and confusing. Keeping in mind the funny remarks made by his characters over the copyright issue of the commune, it looks like Anurag wanted to highlight the deteriorating state of the movement, fast heading towards an un-required commercialization.

Anyway, returning to the film, overall it just remains a fine out of the box attempt for me, which sadly never makes a rock solid impact on the viewer even with its shockingly disgusting climax. In fact if you are an avid lover of the world cinema, then the chances are that you might guess the climax much before it comes in front of you on the screen.

Moreover, it becomes repetitive in the mid and also doesn't give you the main story idea of the writer very clearly. The script basically starts emphasizing on the girl's search for her father after almost one hour and until then the director keeps on showing the related sequences about her good clients, her drug addict boy friend, a south gangster and the girl sitting at the massage parlor's reception talking endlessly on her phone. And the sad part is that most of these characters remain half baked on the screen, unlike a Anurag Kashyap film.

Besides there are many known friends of Anurag doing their very short cameos in the film just as a courtesy, such as Piyush Mishra, Rajat Kapoor, Makrand Deshpande and Ronit Roy, which doesn't really serve any purpose.

In terms of technical production, it is a superb project and in terms of performances its a winning stroke from Kalki Koechlin as the confused girl. But I didn't find the film connecting with the audience at an emotional level. At the most, it simply can be called a never before kind of Indian Film with some highly sexual gestures, taking away the actual limelight from the film itself and its main theme. It no doubt stuns you in its final moments but you don't walk out of the hall highly impressed. The film actually lacks the conflicting drama, which the subject really demanded and therefore in the end it remains a rather bold but less satisfying project from Anurag Kashyap….unexpectedly. Further, co-written by Kalki and Anurag together, TGIYB seems to be more a Kalki's film than a Anurag Kashyap's brainchild. She is wonderful as The Girl in Yellow Boots, but how many times she will go on repeating herself in such psycho kind of roles, that's my question to the girl? Prashant Prakash as her boy-friend is naturally impressive and Gulshan Devaiya shows off his inner talent, even in an under-written role of a disturbed don.

On the whole, with TGIYB, Anurag certainly takes the wave of New Age Indian Cinema a few steps ahead, but still I cannot rate the film as one of his best efforts till date in any case. However, if you only consider the boldness in its open sexual content, then it surely is a path- breaking attempt by the off-beat director in Indian Cinema, unarguably.

Summing up, I want to end this review raising a few questions in front of all film-makers following this trend of experimental, new age cinema, which came to my mind while watching THAT GIRL IN YELLOW BOOTS…….. "Does a new age movie or an experimental film, always supposed to be written around Sex and Perverts? "Do we always need to make such movies around Unusual Sex, Child Abuse, Lesbians, Eunuchs and Gay characters?" and "Is New Age Cinema only dependent and concerned about such repeated subjects only?"

Just give it a thought?

There are certain masked aspects of society which when revealed reflect the filthy side of otherwise laminated societal structure. That Girl in yellow Boots revolves around one such aspect of society which will shock the audience and they will question their foundation. But one need to have a strong belly to digest the film even though all knows whatever depicted is brutally real. This movie which was not getting producer since its inception finally rescued by NFDC thus making its presence felt in International film festival circuits. With a US distributor on board the film will be getting an International release and it deserves that.

Anurag Kashyap collaborated with his wife Kalki Koechlin to write the script of this dark slice of life film. Like Dhobi Ghaat the film revolves around few protagonists but similarity ends there. While the former dealt with softer side of relationships TGIYB reflects the darker side of human nature which is hidden beneath sophistication. Anurag Kashyap knows the darker side of metros like no other director and after exploring Delhi in Dev D the director chose Mumbai and its by-lane to tell the story of Ruth (Played by Kalki) of Indo-British origin. She comes to India in search of her father, who has left the family when she was 5 years old. There are few other characters surrounding Ruth's life. Sid is her boyfriend whose fiend is preoccupied with his d*ck and drugs and the other man Divakar (played by Naseeruddin Shah) who comes for leg massage from Ruth everyday and has a fatherly affection towards her. Amidst her life in the massage parlor Ruth saves money which she uses on search of her father. While digging on the truth some twisted shocking facts comes out which changes the way Ruth perceives few people and things.

Anurag Kashyap keeps his script simple this time with imagery over powering the narrative as the objects in each frame symbolizing something or the other. It is through Ruth's eyes the pervasive man's nature in a metro is laid under a scanner. The "Yellow" color symbolized the psychedelic state of Dev's mind in his earlier masterpiece Dev D. In this movie Yellow symbolizes aberration. It reflects something which is twisted and off-path from societal normal functioning. The clumsy looking yellow boots radiates the confused state of Ruth's mind the way she is vulnerable and hard towards Sid because of whom she looses 57000. The yellow boots also symbolizes the uneasy state of Ruth's existence as she becomes restless in search of her father, perturbed about getting her Visa which is delayed due to evergreen redtapism, edgy about her feelings as she watches Osho but then feel disturbed in getting laid only to satisfy her BF with a hand job. Kashyap is a maverick director who is simply genius in his direction and here also he is simply flawless in execution. All the characters came to live with his finer sense of camera angles, lights and color. He uses the shades of yellow to highlight different state of Ruth. Through Divakar,Sid,local goon Chuttiyappa (brilliantly played by Gulshan Devaiyya who was earlier seen in Shaitan) he tried to hint upon certain Grey shades of society-Grey in terms of optimism as well as negativity. With able support from Shweta Venkat in editing department and Kashyap's patent Rajeev Ravi in camera the director creates the perfect setting needed for the realistic thriller. Most of the time one cant predict the next frame thus showing the brilliance of Venkat's editing. Appreciation would remain incomplete without mentioning Washinq Khan's flawless set design and Shubra Gupta's costume. Naren Chanravarkar and Benedict Taylor's music is easy on ear and in tune with the narrative. Amongst the actor Kalki is in brilliant form as the lady in search of her father. She raises her own bar with this film and look forward to such finer works by her. She should also be given credit for weaving the story which is indeed shockingly real for Indian masses. Language is real and bold but one is witness to such cuss words in Delhi Belly so hopefully it will not come as shocker accept for hand job sequences. Naseeruddin Shah surrenders himself to Mr Kashyap and renders a spontaneous performance. Prashant Prakash's is simply brilliant in his debut film and is an actor to look for. Gulshan Devaiyya rocked as KC in Shaitan and here was at his menacing best as Chutiyappa.Pooja Swaroop excels as blabbering Maya. Divya Jagdale and Shiv Subramaniam did a good job in their respective roles. There are also fine actors like Piyush Mishra, Markand Deshpande, Ronit Roy in one off sequences.

Anurag Kashyap improves himself with each film and through every film he elevates the level of Indian cinema to the next step. TGIYB is one such thriller which will not crash the BO but will surely be remembered in the history of Indian cinema for its brilliance. The film is real, hard, shocking and for a selective audience. If you are a lover of independent cinema then go for this one and you won't be disappointed.

It really is a tough movie to watch. And not just because it switches languages, but because of the theme of the movie. You have a daughter searching for the father. So be prepared for a story that does drag and is not really filled with much excitement. No pun intended, especially considering on how she makes money and tries to get information out of people (again no pun intended with this either of course).

So while on a mission we can see certain things in society, how she is being treated, how she behaves, what she has to do and to what lengths she is willing to go for the truth. You can say that there is feminism in there, but the important thing is, an individual trying to get to the bottom of things ...

I consider myself a big fan of Anurag Kashyap and think Gulaal to be one of the best movies made in Bollywood. In that perspective, I think this movie doesn't live up to expectations and is quite avoidable.

The movie does well in taking you through the Mumbai underbelly from the eyes of an illegal foreign immigrant and inspires images from Shantaram. However, the story is too loose. If it was intended to be a mystery/ thriller, it doesn't have enough pace and coherence. It just keeps jumping back and forth b/w Kalki giving customers hand shakes and randomly following leads to locate her father.

The best sequence in the movie is Kalki narrating her father's death to the gangster when he comes for a massage. The revelation at the end of the movie is shocking and disgusting but there is no build up to it which would make it sort of an inevitable end. It comes as if it's there in order to shock you rather than being the purpose of the story all along. The extremely unconvincing and weak performance of Kalki's father is the weakest link in the movie.

The subject and the first 40-50 minutes are promising and this movie could have been much more. The last 20-25 minutes are a dampener, if you don't give too much thought to the shock/ disgust aspect of the end.

To conclude - Just about an average, "art" movie that might appeal to you because of its "boldness" and being out of line with "societal norms". But very average story line, acting and direction.

You can simply HATE or LOVE Anurag Kashyap Movies but you can't just Ignore it, this movie has just blown my mind, Movie passes through many events which are hard to Resist, but in modern society we go through it thoroughly, if you don't believe me watch news daily. the people who don't like experimental and Dark Version films may not enjoy this film much, Kalki Koechlin's Acting was stunning & gripping, 👌👌 She plays a character named "Ruth Edscer" a British woman who comes to India, to search her father. the whole movie is above our imagination. this movie was completely ahead of that time-period. i enjoyed it totally, i give it 9/10 Stars Thank you. 😉👍