Page 3

Bollywood is still alive and kicking, though just barely. Madhur Bhandarkar has once again made a great film in Page 3. As his earlier masterpiece Chandni Bar, this one too covers a gamut of topics that we see in today's society. Everything from high society, fashion, Bollywood, underworld, media and child-trafficking is covered in this wonderful film.

Several scenes leave an impact:

• The editor of the newspaper who says that the bigger the party, the better the coverage, the higher the sales.
• The dual lives led by the high-society businessmen and hostesses.
• The new encounter technique discovered by the police inspector.
• The absolute lack of respect by the attendees at a funeral.
• The discovery of child-molestation by one of the high-profile businessmen, and the fact that he picks up those children from an orphanage run by his wife!
• The gut-wrenching scenes that follow, in which the expose is silenced.

The life of the reporter Madhavi (Konkana Sen) comes full circle in the end. Starting out as a Page-3 reporter trying to do more meaningful journalism, she goes on the crime-beat with ace reporter Narayan Rane (Atul Kulkarni). She exposes the child-molestation scandal, only to be fired from her job. She gets a job in another newspaper, only to resume her original Page-3 reporting.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has given a first-rate performance in this film. Konkana Sen, Atul Kulkarni, Sandhya Mridul and others. But the cake is taken by Boman Irani. Till the end one cannot make out if he's on the good side or the bad :-)