Miss Lovely is a 2012 Indian drama film
directed by Ashim Ahluwalia and set in the criminal depths of Mumbai's
C-grade (horror and porn film) industry. Ahluwalia's debut feature
follows the story of the Duggal brothers who produce sleazy sex-horror
films in the mid-1980s. The plot explores the intense and mutually
destructive relationship between younger sibling Sonu Duggal, played by
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and his elder brother, Vicky (Anil George). Sonu
finds himself drawn to a mysterious young woman named Pinky (Niharika
Singh) eventually leading to his downfall. Miss Lovely is scheduled for
commercial release on 17 January 2014.
The
stylized form, densely layered narrative, period costumes and
production design simultaneously conveys a pulp style and
contemporaneous modernity. Jonathan Romney of Sight & Sound
described the film as "A shock to the system – an Indian film like I’d
never seen." The film constantly switches between genre pieces and is
part hard-boiled film noir, part love story, part melodrama and part
documentary. It has been compared to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The
Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express and
Dario Argento's Suspiria. According to an interview with Ahluwalia,
however, he only mentions an affinity with "Filmmakers from the New
Wave, like Nagisa Oshima, [Shohei] Imamura, Seijun Suzuki."
Shot on a combination of Kodak Super 16 and 35mm film in widescreen, central themes of Miss Lovely include repressed sexuality, censorship, the deconstruction of genre, the material nature of celluloid and the extinction of cinema itself. The film soundtrack also links back to a history of past cinema, particularly the use of rare work of Italian composers Egisto Macchi and Piero Umiliani, who had both scored exploitation films. The soundtrack also employs film scores by Indian composer Ilaiyaraaja and disco producer Biddu.
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