MOVIE REVIEW : FASHION

FASHION : Reality sans Drama !

Madhur Bhandarkar's name has become synonymous with realistic cinema. Cinema which is far from melodrama, cinema which touches the reality around us, cinema which explores the under-belly of situations in real life around us. There is no doubt about the quality of cinema which Madhur makes. However, one big challenge for such kind of realistic cinema, which is similar to the "Art Movies" of the past decades, is to connect to the audience at large.

Madhur, with much acclaimed cinema like Chandani Bar and Satta, could only impact the niche audience, gather acclaim in the Festival circuits and also win Laurels in the form of National Awards. These movies however could not have much commercial success, neither could they fit the bill to be called an entertaining cinema. This however was very well understood by Madhur and the this connect was made with movies like Page3 and Corporate, which were not just realistic movies but entertaining aswell and garnered commercial success, seamlessly bridging the gap of "Art Cinema" and "Mainstream" one.

Madhur however seems to forget this very important aspect over and over again. He did the same in Traffic Signal and now he repeats the act in Fashion.

Fashion is no doubt a nice movie showing the realistic aspect of the Fashion World. It reveals the not so hidden underbelly of an industry which is low on moral, low ethics and full of opportunism and short terms successes.
However it lacks any kind of Drama, which is essential to make the movie entertaining. One is not even able to relate to the main protagonist, Meghna Mathur(Priyanka Chopra). Even though the scripts nicely traces the rise and fall of the small town girl from Chandigarh, who is high on ambition and gives up all her middle class values to attain success, and in the process leaves behind a trail of sour relationships and lost friends. And finally is not able to handle success and ends up as a soul less girl completely engulfed in depression.
But at no point you are with her. Neither as a naïve girl, in her struggle in Mumbai, which ends up looking too simplistic and easy. Nor in her success where she develops arrogance and get completely engulfed and intoxicated with it. And not even in her depression, where she looses everything.
The quality of good cinema is not just to show the changing and grey shaded of human behavior but also the ability to make audience empathize with the characters, where people are able to relate to the characters and find a little bit of themselves in the character. And this is where Madhur completely falters.
He takes his realistic cinema image too seriously and takes all other aspect of movie making for-granted. His indulgence with realism is extreme. The ramp scenes are inordinately long. The low on moral models, the opportunistic men, the gay designers, the wardrobe malfunctions, drugs ... it all seems like, been there done that and is reminiscent of things we have already seen in movies like Page3 and all the ubiquitous News channels.
In all the "realism" that Fashion tries to discover, there seems to be no new-ness and everything is so predictable. And to make the matters worse, there is nothing else to hold the attention of the Audience. What starts as a quite encouraging movie, ends up as a very long lifeless documentary. Probably editing the movie to cut the flab by 30 to 45mins might have added some life in it.

On a whole, Fashion is one more realistic attempt by Madhur Bandarkar, which does not discover anything new and ends up as a long, lifeless, tiring movie. Watch it for, interesting though clichéd performance by Kangana Ranaut, debutant but confident Mugdha Godse and the effervescent performance by Arbaaz Khan.

Ameet Mattoo
New Delhi.