SILK SMITTEN!

A young Reshma (Vidya Balan) runs away from her village home to Madras to escape marriage. She works at a local eatery, idolizes Suryakanth (Naseerudin Shah) and mouths firebrand lines. As an annual ritual,she queues up with other girls at a film set with the hope of landing some role in a movie. Her life isn't picture-perfect, but she's determined to make it that way.

A chance encounter at a film set changes it all. She bags a two-minute dance sequence in a movie. A whip is her only prop and she doesn't mind inflicting pain on herself. This 'nakka mukka' song revives the fortunes of a sinking movie. The producer Selvaganesh (Rajesh Sharma) is all happy, he christens her Silk and gets her to do more movies. The director Abraham (Emraan Hashmi) calls her moti and abhors her.

Then there's no stopping her. Silk knows that sex sells and she sells it just right. She bites her lips, pouts, shoves the lumps of her breast in the audience's face and dances in various stages of nudity. All men have dreams, but Silk is their only wet dream. If other actors play to the galleries, Silk 'foreplays' to the galleries. She develops cold feet on first seeing superstar Suryakanth, but tactical that she is, she seduces him off-screen before going 'Ooh la la'. Soon enough, she becomes the toast of the 80s South film industry. But professional highs bring with them personal lows. Her sexual escapades with Suryakanth come to an abrupt end. Enter Ramakanth (Tushar Kapoor) his younger brother. This affair begins on an earnest note, but soon fizzles out.

Filmmakers start changing loyalties, competition begins to unsettle her, gossip magazines carry unsavoury stories and thus begins Silk's gradual descent into alcoholism and unemployment. It is at this time that her bugbear Abraham warms up to her. An unlikely love story almost begins, but Silk's encounter with a porn filmmaker changes it all and also perhaps proves to be the final nail in the coffin. She commits suicide.

As Silk, Vidya Balan's performance is commendable on almost every count. On a cosmetic level, she just doesn't mind flaunting her stomach folds or dipslaying her muffin tops. She chucks size zero for size 'hero'. Acting-wise she convincingly utters every dialogue, most of which have sexual undertones. In this movie, she has shed her inhibitions as she has her clothes and given Silk a soul.

However, her personal and professional downward spiral are depicted very hastily by director Milan Luthria and those sequences are not very convincing. Shah and Hashmi are very good in their parts and they ably support Balan. Kapoor is okay and has nothing much to do. Of the peripheral cast, Sharma and Anju Mahendru (as the magazine editor) are brilliant. The dialogues are funny but full of double entendres. Vishal-Shekhar's music is good with 'Ooh la la' being the most hummable song.

But, the only reason The Dirty Picture is worth a watch is because Balan pushes the envelope as far acting and appearance go (and as the envelope falls, she, irrespective of her dangerously low neckline, doesn't mind bending down to pick it up!).