Lipstick Under My Burkha

The movie is directed by Alankrita Shrivastava who was assistant director to Indian Hindi movies Director Prakash Jha's two films Apaharan and Rajneeti - who has supported her to produced this film.

The story is of four women - Usha (Ratna Pathak) Leela (Aahana Kumra), Shirin (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Rehana (Plabita Borthakur) - all staying in the same chawl - a mix of religious identities and age groups

The story is narrated on a parallel track of a novel that Usha's voice-over reads parts of a Hindi porno novel "Lipstick wale Sapne"

Usha is in mid fifties who loves to read porno novels,

Leela is a sex-hungry girl in love with a photography and aspiring to be a celebrity, but is engaged with another guy - yet continues to have sex and love her lover

Shirin is a housewife who secretly does a job of sales women to support her family when her unemployed husband is out having an extra- marital affair and whenever he comes home, is obsessed with treating his wife Shirin as sex object.

And Rehana is a college going girl who wants to break free from her religious conservative Muslim family. She goes out from her house wearing a Burkha but craves for all western things - music, dresses, dance, life-style etc., is a shop-lifter at shops in malls of expensive things she likes.

For sure all the four characters would exist in real life - and a story on them would be interesting. But the living context does not make it practically plausible, but this are some filmy liberties that are permitted when the director's aim is to put a specific point across.

The basic idea of the director is to give audience a SHOCK TREATMENT by showing a lot of sex scenes from the view point of being a women.

Except a few well written and directed scenes, the film falls down to being a B-C grade cinema.

Girls and women exists who also crave for sex as men is well presented. They want to break free of all the norms society lays on them. What the movie ends up in is a lop - sided portrayal of women and girls. But the point is strongly delivered.

Many people think engaging in sex, protests, anger, doing something different that no one approves is breaking Free and being LIBERAL. which is such a poor view of liberalism.

Among the four actress - Ratna Pathak and Konkona Sen excel in their portrayals, especially their culmination scenes where

Ratna is reminded of her old age and her looks and her desires and LOVE, but termed as "shameful" by throwing her on the streets. That scene broke my heart into pieces

And the culmination scene of Konkona being brutally raped by her husband and asked to stop working is another scene that brought tears to my eyes..

It is a bit difficult to sit thought the entire duration of the film without getting bored - but I sat through curiously to see - what the Director had in mind to conclude with.

Direction is below average, some scenes are so stupid, some sub-plots and characters hard to believe or digest.

The depiction of these four women too is shallow and it is only for the credit of Konkona and Ratna Pathak's maturity that - there is some depth in their characters because of their portrayals - the other two ladies are okay - nothing to write about.

There are so many (may be more than 100) scenes where the director has not taken care of continuity while shooting or editing. The placement of extras keep on changing places, and so do the make up of artists.

Overall - I think the purpose was to make a feminist point about putting across women's sexual desire issues strongly - right ON THE FACE as a slap to society in general. The film on a large part succeeds in that. But there is no subtlety in anything.

The same points could had been made with more force without using so many sexual scenes and dialogues.

If this is what they call women liberalization movement, we have to still go a long way back and start all over again...

I give this movie 5.25 rating out of 10.

This movie revolves around the lives of 4 women. The director tries to portray how unhappy these 4 are in their lives, due to their circumstances which are mainly the result of our society. Ratna Pathak's narration throughout the movie is very irritating, even though her performance is very bold and outstanding. The movie tends to be very slow and has been unnecessarily prolonged.

There is no proper conclusion shown in the end and it is left uncertain, as the movie ends abruptly. Watch the movie only if you have nothing else to do.

This movie may be slight boring and irritating if you are looking for entertainment. But if you like to see true picture of our Indian society this is the best movie..Director Alankrita Shrivastava disparately want to show us mirror, and thats why she has not taken 1 or 2, but chosen 4 types of woman characters and successfully portrayed.

I don't think its 50 or 60%, but most of men or woman, specifically woman, forced to live a life, imposed by our Indian society, which director bravely depicted in this movie.

Aahana, Ratna, Konkona & Plabita, played their role flawlessly, and director had very good grip on movie, all the time..

This is somewhat of an offbeat movie to come out of the mainstream Hindi movie industry. The topic and the narration is refreshing. The setting in Bhopal (a non-metro city) helps. There's shock, humour and sadness in equal doses. I just wished the ending would have been more wholesome rather than leaving things unsaid. By the way, the movie certainly deserved the A (Adult) certification it was handed by the Film Certification Board and you'll realize in no time why it ran into controversies.

Lipstick Under My Burkha is a rather over rated film. It is watchable and reasonably interesting though not extraordinarily so.

It appears that this movie got a great deal of extra publicity only because it was banned initially. Why it was banned is anyone's guess for there is absolutely nothing in it to warrant a censure let alone a ban. Anyway, all publicity in this business is good so to that extent the ban gave LUMB a better 'must watch' factor!

The plot is about 4 women, their lives, their feelings. It is somewhat stretched, somewhat disjointed and somewhat connected. The acting was good, the cinematography good, the sets realistic but something was missing.

LUMB is watchable but it is certainly not a brilliant film by any stretch of the imagination.