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Page 3
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'Page 3' Exposé of the elite

By Nitika Desai
Film critic, ApunKaChoice.Com

Madhur Bhandarkar’s movie ‘Page 3’ takes a candid look into the lives of celebrities and stars that adorn the third page of newspaper. The film penetrates through the façade of their ‘hunky-dory’ lives and reveals the hypocrisy, superficiality and shallowness that lie underneath.

The story is told through the perspective of a young journalist Madhavi (Konkana) who writes columns on page 3 celebrities for a leading publication. Its editor Deepak Suri (Boman Irani) is a man of discretion. He separates grain from the chaff and publishes stories with a fine balance of impartiality and considerations for people’s privacy.

Madhavi

takes to her job like a fish to water and soon becomes a known face in the parties and get togethers. That is when she gradually begins to see the glimpses of the reality behind the beautiful facades.

The real faces of Page 3 celebs are exposed through a number of characters – businessmen and their resentful wives, social workers with dysfunctional families, politicians and their lofty talks, friends that backbite each other, desensitized cops, pedophiles, drug addicts, a gay make-up artist, a ‘person’ with indeterminate sex, and so on…

As soon as Madhavi begins to get disillusioned with her job of covering lives of these celebs and declares that “the party is over” for her, she is rejected by her friends and spurned by the same sweet-talking high society that once called her a darling.

Madhur Bhandarkar deftly and authentically delineates the sketches of Page 3 glitterati by thoughtfully casting some of the real life celebs like Maya Alagh, Soni Razdan, Navni Parihar, Suchitra Pillai, Kunika, Anju Mahendru and Rehaan Engineer.
The director also brings out a fine contrast in the second half of his story by shifting the focus to downtown Mumbai and revealing its shady denizens like prostitutes, pimps, petty criminals, drug peddlers and so on.

Konkana Sen fits well into the role of a rookie journalist owing to her unassuming persona. She catches the nuances of her character well enough and finely brings out its disillusionment of the shallow and pretentious side of high society life.

Another plus point of ‘Page 3’ is that the songs have been kept in the background. However, one item number Kuan Ma Doob Jaaoongi simply irritates.

All in all, a good movie.

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