The Dirty Picture

What makes us watch, despite everything is Vidya Balan, who dares to go where not too many leading ladies have. This is her film. But it would have been a better, braver film if it had let her go all the way, not just in bed.

This film offers big laughs, fantastic spectacle, big emotions, and a powerhouse performance from a brave and exciting actress.

Like its subject, the tone of Luthria's movie is slightly over-the top and tends to caricaturize certain characters, but the lead performance is so all-encompassing that you don't mind these flaws.

Vidya Balan attacks the role with the same ferocity her character nakedly (in more ways than one) pursues fame at any cost, commanding and compelling when Silk is at her most vain, heartbreaking when she falls into increasingly desperate self-destruction.

Balana captures the conflicted life...of a young woman unprepared for the realities of her dreams. Had Luthria's film fully committed to the painful truth as much as its leading lady, it may have honoured Smitha's memory far more substantially.