Vidya Balan and her cleavage steal the show. No doubts about it. Close second is Naseeruddin Shah’s hanging second chin (or is it the first?). Let’s just call it a jowl.

Now, Reshma is a village belle. She runs away on her wedding night to the big city. No problem. No accosting. No potential threats to her integrity. She finds herself housed with a local shopkeeper (Amma) who treats her almost like her daughter. And Reshma enjoys putting of the neighbours’ conjugal joys by making sounds of pleasure while eating what seems like Chivda.

She wants to be a film star (not actress, mind you, star). And so she queues up at the studios in Madras looking for any bit role. Offers the doorkeeper there ‘anything’ in return for entry into the studio. Gets money in return for nothing. Doesn’t spend it then, but eventually returns it. *facepalm*

She does make it into the studio, agrees to be whipped as part of the dance sequence and gets her first shot in front of the camera. Mind you, for an inexperienced girl, there’s no nerves, no jitters, no inexperience… just raunchy moves that turn everyone on!

Everyone, that is, except the real director who coincidentally on that day wasn’t shooting. He chides his assistants and threatens to burn the film. Until the producer rules that he will re-release the film in smaller centres with the song Reshma did.

During all this, poor Reshma is suffering. The song didn’t make the film, her dreams appear quashed. And she is aimlessly wandering from theater to theater. During one such wanderlust, she flirts with prostitution as a career, but instead, her mind convinces her that someone willing to pay her Rs 20 for an hour is a sign that there are others who will pay to see her on the screen. Oh, well.

Soon enough, producer of whip-song-movie finds her house and in a moment, renames her Silk. The credit goes to a passing hand-rickshaw with an ad for Silk Sarees. And so it begins… she stars opposite her favourite star Surya (Naseeruddin Shah and jowls) and almost mucks it up. Until that is, she fucks him up! Literally!

And so begins one sordid tale after another. Up until the above point, the movie is interesting. We have met all the main characters (Tusshar Kapoor is an also ran like all his movies). There is promise of a good story. Triumph against the odds kind of victory.

Unfortunately, too much raunchiness is not good for a film’s health. And the dialogue writers should have remembered it. One-liners stand out when repeated in different situations with different meanings. Or when interspersed with verbose communication. But if every line is a one-liner, what do you remember? It seems like the dialogue writers met at Landmark one day, Crossword the next until they figured Azad Maidan is the best place for dirty joke books. And so they went. And then wrote. And we have to endure.

The final 45 minutes are an endurance test. There isn’t much happening in Silk’s life except everything going wrong, but the amount of time and reel taken to emphasize this is staggering.

I wouldn’t call this a great movie. No, no. Not at all. It’s entertaining until start to yearn for more meat (in the movie, that is) and substance (in the dialogue).

Somewhere, I also got the feeling that the director/makers couldn’t quite make up their mind if despite the presentation they actually wanted to make a biopic or an arthouse film. It’s all very confusing.

Of course, as a viewer, the main question is whether it was worth the Rs 250 I spent. I’d say it was worth about Rs 150. That’s about a 3/5 rating!

Thanks, DNA! (Btw, the right-click-disabler isn’t all that good!) Also see the Ghost who Walks in this picture.

1. No wonder Cuba went bust.
2. How?
3. At 82, if he’s been with 35,000 women, that’s about 1.18 every day. So someone he slept with in 1959 would not be eligible for another fling until today? That, of course, assumes he hasn’t added to the 35,000.

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