Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Cast Anara Gupta, Amit Rao, Smita Jaykar, Mukesh Tiwari, Yashpal Sharma
Director: KK Yadav
Miss Anara is the real-life story of a young girl from Jammu who a couple of years ago made her way into every single newspaper and TV channel. It8217;s a story which perhaps still plays itself out in every small town. It8217;s sordid and it8217;s familiar: the connection between small-town beauty contests, and sexual favours on demand to the local powers-that-be. The fatal attraction of fame and fortune frequently forces the participants into situations where they get sex-ploited and abused, and the perpetrators go scot-free.
Anara Gupta, playing herself in the movie, rebuffs the advances of a top cop. That8217;s when her miseries start. She and her mother and brothers are picked up by thepolice and subjected to third degree torture for over 11 days, till Anara breaks and confesses that she has, indeed, acted in a blue film.
Director KK Yadav who? gives us brutal, graphic torture scenes stretched over half an hour. He stops short of rape, but just about. There8217;s a long sequence of a moaning twosome in bed, with a camera recording their actions. There are leering male cops, pathologically cruel female cops, and such lines as ab woh sab kuch kho chuki hai; ab uske paas kuch nahin bacha, leaving us in no doubt about what Anara must have undergone when the camera took a break.
This is voyeurism at its worst. Instead of moving us at the plight of Anara and countless girls like her, we are left feeling exploited ourselves. Her story is worth telling, but not this determinedly C-grade, sleazy way.
