A relatively interesting, albeit superficial documentary about a middling-to-low intellect woman who makes it big from porn--particularly in the subcontinent. The film details the self-orchestrated rise to stardom (lit. to a lechers' idol) of the Canadian-Indian porn-cum-Bollywood actress, "Sunny Leone".
The central theme of the film is money and her erurience for making as much of it as possible. The capitalist / colonialist influences that imbue her every utterance, are clear to discern (even if she is surely complete unconscious of it): she sells herself -- be it as a proud, on-screen whore, or as something more wholesome -- to the highest bidder, in an effort to realise her dreams of, frankly, being rich. (NB: She makes a point of disabusing the audience of any assumption of her being "poor" in her childhood -- only that she could was not given "everything" she wanted, was all.)
Of course, as is often the case with porn actors, "Sunny" seems to have the same delusion of grandeur: imagining herself as a 'Meryl Streep' locked in a naked vessels of tawdry titillation. Most all of her ilk seemingly (indeed, comically!) suffer from the same pathological obliviousness to what is laughably obvious to everyone else: that their only allure is the erotica they engage in -- an allure lasting not a minute longer than the dopamine intoxication in their voyeurs' brains does! To be fair, however, this is something that is touched on later in the film -- when "Sunny" ruminates on her reception by what she fantasies of as being her (Bollywood) acting peers.
The biggest take-aways from this film for mine were, 1) the reverberative effects of females entering into pornography at a young (teens) age -- regarding their their apparently ubiquitous stunted maturity and intellect; 2), the rather seedy and almost puerile nature of Indian attitudes towards sex, the sex industry and its workers -- especially accentuated, in light of the veritable rape epidemic that the nation has been afflicted by for Shiva knows how long (see: Indian banned BBC doco "India's Daughters", for a deeper insight); 3), the de rigueur exploitation of females in said fields and how women / girls themselves even enable this environment to flourish; and 4), the decadent societies that we exist in (rich or poor), which foster, propagate and perpetuate these sordid industries, and which render them as lucrative as they have become.
NB: A special mention with regards to her introspection relating to "Sunny's" parents, which appears in the latter part of the film -- her child-like admissions of guilt (...?) here, cast an umbral shadow over her story; and therefore must be seen and factored in, in order to provide context for the film (and her story) as a whole.
7.5/10
