Cast - Priyanka Chopra, Kangna Ranaut, Mugdha Godse

Director - Madhur Bhandarkar

Beauty, attitude, cigarettes, alcohol, promiscuous sex, cigarettes, drugs, gay guys and more cigarettes! Those are the elements of the Indian Fashion industry. Madhur Bhandarkar’s FASHION is another homage to powerful women in high positions (anyone else sense the Freudian under tones?). This time around he takes all that Maybelline mascara off of this cut throat, no hold bars world and exposes the wrinkly and saggy side.

Regardless of the popularity achieved by Ashwariya Rai, Lara Dutta, Sushmita Sen, Dia Mirza and of course Priyanka Chopra in all those Miss Whatever pageants, Mumbai still doesn’t hold its own when it comes to fashion cities such as Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Milan and Prague. The closest contribution India has to the fashion world are all those Calvin Klein button up shirts with a “Made In India” tag.

This three hour expose/documentary/film/mockumentry tells the story of a small town girl from Chandigarh (population is close to one million, not exactly a small town) Meghna Mathur (Priyanka Chopra), who dreams of going to Mumbai and becoming a successful super model. Once in Mumbai she instantly befriends Rohit Khanna (Ashwin Mushran) who helps her with the do’s and don’ts of the industry. You know the saying, behind every successful woman there’s a gay fashion designer.

Day by day our Barbie doll is exposed to the “fake-shion” world of drinking, smoking and going to parties as an escort girl. Her ambitions remain strong but her patience starts to wear thin. She works hard for minor modeling gigs (Even as a lingerie model. Gasp! Oh no someone please help this poor innocent girl) to scrape enough cash for a high caliber portfolio. During these troubling times she gets to know a handsome (straight) struggling model Maanav Bhasin (Arjan Bajwa). They both eventually share a flat due to financial constraints, but aren’t married (This movie is destroying the fabric of Indian values! Effigy!).

While slowly inching her way towards catwalk shows our heroine meets the mogul himself, Abhijit Sarin (Arbaaz Khan). His fixation with this fresh face opens up new opportunities for Meghna, she even becomes Sarin’s number one model replacing the previous number one Shonali Gujral (Kangna Ranaut). Soon the princess of posh watches her career soar to new heights only to see it come crashing down due to her arrogance and stubbornness. Her bottom of the barrel moment comes when she wakes up in bed with a random black guy (You know that saying, once you go black you realize all your failures as a person). She runs away from this awful world and goes back to mommy and daddy.

The film does an excellent job at showing logistics behind the fashion duniya, it surely takes the mask off of the industry as a whole. However, what is depicted in the film that the general public may not already know? There were some provoking dilemma’s Meghna Mathur and Rahul Arora (Sameer Soni) had to face but the entire concept remains a bit simplistic.

Bhandarkar should have re-examined his strategy and perhaps gone with the story line of Shonali Gujral, a drug using junkie with an abusive boyfriend (also her dealer). That’s a story with some serious potential. An innocent “small town” girl goes to the big bad world and gets engrossed in it…overcooked, check please I’ll just grab some junk food on the way home.

The performances were a mixed bag of hot, mild and ketchup. This was by far Priyanka Chopra’s most meaningful role and she was effective, but was unconvincing as an arrogant super model who had no care for anyone around her (maybe she’s too nice of a person). Arbaaz Khan can’t seem to make a facial expression besides a smirk stretching from ear to ear. He was out of place and in no way comes off as the mastermind of the biggest fashion house in India. It seems as if he wandered on the sets and was lost throughout the entire three hours. Newcomer Mugdha Godse had the finest performance of any first time female actress this year. She was not a victim of over acting and did not over exuberate herself as is the most common mistake by new heroines. The runaway champion was Kangna Ranaut! She dictated her manic personality very well and gave you a front row seat at her struggles with alcohol and drug abuse. Its unfortunate Kangna’s plot was not the main one, there was a deep well to be explored here.

Overall the film takes you on a journey, gets you familiar with the characters but nonetheless is excruciatingly long. Sameer Soni’s side story of a closet homosexual could have been completely avoided, had Bhandarkar attached that plot line to Ashwin Mushran’s character. The movie should make a hefty profit, supposedly half of the investment has already been recovered in endorsements. But the shear curiosity and anticipation will attract the younger movie goers. Drugs, alcohol, sex and an explosion of gay fashion designers (maybe not in that order), you can’t go wrong. Definitely worth taking a look.

Rating - 3 out of 5 stars

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