That Girl in Yellow Boots

Anurag Kashyap ("Water") delivers another stunningly controversial masterpiece with "That Girl In Yellow Boots". True to form as one of India's leading modern indie filmmakers, this film will bedazzle and shock you. Kashyap takes us on a colourful and dangerous journey through the underbelly of Bombay experienced through the eyes of Ruth (Kalki Koechlin).

Kalki Koechlin (winner, best supporting actress Filmfare, "Dev. D") co wrote this sizzling script with Kashyap. Every character is remarkably fleshed out from Ruth herself to the thugs running drug rackets and the girls and their clients in the massage parlour. The growing reality of the size of the sex trade in India inspired Kashyap to conceive of this story and to collaborate with Koechlin on the script. ..

Emily, a troubled British girl, embarks on a dark journey in the slums of Mumbai to find her long lost father. She'll learn a lesson that could be useful for us too: sometimes, ignorance is bliss. Ignorance about people, places, ideas. The world isn't our playground.

Brilliant script, good acting but definitely not for everyone.

You can simply HATE or LOVE Anurag Kashyap Movies but you can't just Ignore it, this movie has just blown my mind, Movie passes through many events which are hard to Resist, but in modern society we go through it thoroughly, if you don't believe me watch news daily. the people who don't like experimental and Dark Version films may not enjoy this film much, Kalki Koechlin's Acting was stunning & gripping, 👌👌 She plays a character named "Ruth Edscer" a British woman who comes to India, to search her father. the whole movie is above our imagination. this movie was completely ahead of that time-period. i enjoyed it totally, i give it 9/10 Stars Thank you. 😉👍

It really is a tough movie to watch. And not just because it switches languages, but because of the theme of the movie. You have a daughter searching for the father. So be prepared for a story that does drag and is not really filled with much excitement. No pun intended, especially considering on how she makes money and tries to get information out of people (again no pun intended with this either of course).

So while on a mission we can see certain things in society, how she is being treated, how she behaves, what she has to do and to what lengths she is willing to go for the truth. You can say that there is feminism in there, but the important thing is, an individual trying to get to the bottom of things ...

With "That Girl in Yellow Boots", Anurag Kashyap moves into what is known as the International art-house circuit. Films here are generally about weird out of place characters stuck in emotional turmoil. Generally sexuality or the abuse of it is the undercurrent theme of most of these films. Most characters are depraved and yet seemingly deep. Most importantly most of it is about people who you will never meet or never know in real life. The situations and locations in the films will be so out of place that you will trouble identifying with almost all of them. These films are bold and more often than not for the sake of being bold.

"That Girl in Yellow Boots" is all of the above. Shot extensively well it tells a poignant story of an English girl Ruth (Kalki Koechlin) who is illegally in India. She is searching for her father who left her and her mother a long time ago. To sustain herself and pay the bribes to the authorities she works in a massage parlor where she also earns a quick thou on every hand job she does. To add to this dreary existence is a cocaine addicted boyfriend (an unknown Prashant Prakash) and a Kannada gangster (a brilliant Gulshan Devaiya last seen in Shaitan) looking to get his money back.

Many other world weary characters come and go. Like the annoyingly loquacious massage receptionist who keeps flirting on the phone (a superb Pooja Swarup), an old fatherly figure (Naseeruddin Shah) who only comes to the parlor for a good clean massage and a slimy inspector who keeps turning up and demanding money (for what reasons we are never told).

Amidst all of this the film becomes a list of interlaced seemingly disconnected scenes of either Ruth massaging (read pleasuring) someone or searching for her father by finding his namesake who has the same occupation as her father.

The film pretty much has a solid Kalki in every frame. She lights up at every opportunity that brings her nearer to her father and at the same time makes you realize her frustration as someone who is constantly meeting expectations of strangers. It is a wonderfully dark role and Kalki's silence at most times speaks volumes.

Anurag Kashyap as usual frames each shot with much care but one can't help but wonder that he seems to have blurred the line between shocking us through realistic characters in extraordinary situations and shocking us for the sake of shocking.

So in the end you might end up questioning why such unnecessarily outrageous, vulgar and sexually charged up tones are present in almost all representations in this grim mystery. Why is it that the boyfriend is such an extreme figure trying to rehabilitate himself by chaining himself to a window? Why is the gangster called Chitiappa, so that the C word can be repeated again and again? and not to mention the art decor house that Ruth lives in which seems overtly engulfed with decay. Or for that matter the shocking ending which folks would have seen coming half way through the movie (though not the identity of the person in question) I guess Anurag constantly is trying to break the barrier of how politically incorrect he can get with his movies and if the price to pay is a storyline or disconnected characters, then so be it. What he does not realize is that audience will only remember this for the shock value and not some artistic vision that the International Art-house Circuit often enjoys.

But to his credit, there is one thing that the film does prove that Anurag Kashyap can handle complex emotional subjects with amazing control and not create something that could have easily slipped into a depressing and ugly snooze fest. In the end, TGIYB would be remembered as one of the also made for a director who would eventually be counted as one of the all time greats for Indian Cinema.

Final Recommendation That Girl in Yellow Boots is worth a watch but to film freaks who like to be shocked and are looking for the discerning stuff esp. for fans of Gaspar Noe and Lars Von Trier. For other enthusiastic fans of the multiplex movies (read Shaitan, Dev D etc. ) this may not be the shoe they want to try on. Fans of commercial fare like Wanted and Dabangg might as well stay miles away from this lest they get nightmares.