Laaga Chunari Mein Daag

Laaga Chunari Mein Daag has got to be one of THE MOST regressive movies of all time. The story goes something like this - Rani & Konkona are daughters of Anupam Kher & Jaya Bachchan. The family lives in penury in a dilapidated palatial house in Benaras. The dad (Anupam Kher) does nothing in life except crib that he doesn't have a son. The mom (Jaya Bachchan) spends all night stitching clothes and weeping. Stuff happens, Rani finally has enough of the "I wish I had a son, he would've taken care of me" crap from her dad, and decides to go to Mumbai to find a job. She's obviously a pretty innocent small-town girl coming to the big bad city of wolves. She tries to get a job at a call center but is refused because she hasn't even cleared her Std.10th exams and can't speak English. The head of the call center takes advantage of her by asking her to sleep with him in return for a job, which he doesn't give her anyway. She sleeps with him and that's the proverbial end of her innocence. She meets Suchitra Pillai, who advises her to become an exclusive high-society call girl. Rani figures she's slept with one man for money (which is good, btw) so she might as well sleep with the rest of the men in the world!

That's the "journey of the woman" the producers of the movie are talking about. The rest of the movie is predictable and inconsequential, except the scene where Konkona finds out the truth about her sister and her reaction to it.

I had a lot of issues with the movie. For starters, had it been a movie based in the 1970s or so, the premise of a small-town girl coming to a big city and ending up as a prostitute might have made sense. But the story is set in today's times, in contemporary Mumbai with parts of it based in Switzerland! Today, there are lots of other avenues for women who come to Mumbai in search of a job. Any call center or store would have given her a job (maybe not a high profile one but a smaller one for sure) - they train you in English anyway! Prostitution is not the only recourse for not very highly educated small-town women coming to Mumbai.

Secondly, I would like to know what exactly Suchitra Pillai does for a living that she's advising Rani Mukherjee to become a call girl of all things! The scriptwriter/director conveniently forgot to reveal that!

Jaya Bachchan is a mother like no other. Her distraught daughter calls her from Mumbai to ask her whether she should give in to the demands of the call center guy, and though Jaya Bachchan is a little harried in that scene, she asks her daughter to do whatever she thinks is good for the family! And later, when Konkona is getting married, Jaya Bachchan asks Rani not to come to Beneras for her only sister's wedding because people might talk and the wedding might get jeopardized!

Rani Mukherjee becomes the mistress of a wealthy patent lawyer (or something of the sorts) who gets her a plush apartment in Mumbai, takes her globe-trotting to his conferences, and introduces her as his PR manager! My friend, who is also into PR, took deep offence to this, and I sympathize with her all the way. Even I would've been mighty pissed if he had introduced her as the Market Research consultant for his firm!

Finally, I would like to know why the dad was allowed to get away so easily in the end, with being such a useless thing. Throughout the movie he cribs about how he wishes he had a son, does nothing productive in life that would help improve his family's financial situation, and when he finds out the truth about Rani, simply hugs his family, says sorry and absolves himself of all guilt or responsibility. Honestly, it will be terrible to have a father like him!

There was one scene (that I remember now) in the movie that I found completely bizarre. Rani sings a song with Abhishek Bachchan in Switzerland, goes to have breakfast/coffee with him, gets a phone call, goes away to take it, and disappears! She doesn't even bother to tell him that something urgent has come up & she needs to go. Who acts like that?!!

I went to watch the movie b/c of Pradeep Sarkar who made a sensible & immensely watchable movie like Parineeta. I wonder what compelled him to make a regressive and implausible movie as Laaga...I really wonder. The only good things about the movie are the shots of Benaras (breathtaking!) and the title track.