Loaded with sex and adult content, was screened at Cannes.
By Prabhav Hiremath
MUMBAI: While his debut feature film John & Jane (2005), had a world premiere and a European premiere at the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festival, respectively, and which eventually won him a National Film Award, film director Ashim Ahluwalia’s second feature film, ‘Miss Lovely’ has had to wait close to two years before it could release commercially in India, and the director is surprised the Censor Board is letting it be released with only four cuts: the film has too much of adult content.
The 2012 film, starring Nawazuddin Siddique and former Miss India Niharika Singh, will finally hit the theatres with 400 prints this Friday, January 17th. Earlier, this film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in its ‘Un Certain Regard’ section. In addition, it was screened at various other film festivals like Toronto International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
When the matter of releasing it in India came first on the table, India’s film censor board, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) originally proposed Ahluwalia a total of 157 cuts in his film before he could release it. Now, with the censor board certifying it with an ‘A’ certificate, the film has just four cuts in the entire duration of 110 minutes. The number of cuts fell drastically after the board revised it over a period of one year.
The director, who has four short films to his credits, prefer to work outside Bollywood environment and its stars. While at Cannes, the filmmaker said to media, “The primary thing I want viewers at Cannes to take away is that Indian cinema is not all Bollywood. That’s the misconception. My work wants to break that perception that we are under-educated about cinema.”
Ahluwalia, who is delighted to see his film finally releasing in India, is of the opinion that a release in India was not in his mind when he made the film, because of the adult content in the film.
Miss Lovely, set in 1980s, is a dramatized tale of Mumbai’s C-grade film industry which includes horror and porn. It’s a story of two brothers Sonu (Nawazuddin) and Vicky (Anil George) who are involved in making sex-horror films by sexually exploiting women who seek fame. In the process, Sonu comes across Pinky (Niharika Singh) who, according to him, perfectly fits into the character of Miss Lovely, a film he wants to make.
To contact the author, email to editor@americanbazaaronline.com