Comments on: ‘Look Ma, No Stains’: Laaga Chunari Mein Daag

By: Shirish

Shirish — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:58:43 +0000

Ultimate review!!
Very very valid points..

By: â??Quintessential modern Indian womanâ??? | DesiPundit

â??Quintessential modern Indian womanâ??? | DesiPundit — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:51:31 +0000

[...] deconstructs Laaga Chunari Mein Daag. To begin with, the entire film is fraught with strong messages on women’s sexuality and [...]

By: Sara

Sara — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:32:33 +0000

I went to see this movie without hearing about it before. At one point I thought it would explore a very interesting theme, which is the complicity of families in prostitution – the “sacrifice” of a daughter to save the family from financial ruin. But, yet again, the movie just fell into the usual stereotypes…

By: Anindita Sengupta

Anindita Sengupta — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:48:09 +0000

@apu
Thanks for your comments and the link. Yes, I can see where you’re coming from but I disagree in the sense that I believe in having higher expectation. There are movies in modern times that have dashed stereotypes and I thought LCMD was terribly retrogressive.

@Indhu
I loved Chak De India for that…for all it’s patriotic melodrama, to me it was a film about women at the end of the day.

@Dilip
Do watch it still…and let me know what you think . Thanks for dropping by.

@Vinod
Haven’t seen that one so can’t comment. But doubt it will have purity as a central theme .

@amanthan
I was okay with Parineeta because I went into knowing the text itself was based in an earlier time.

@Dipanjan
Ah…nice ones. But no Bollywood?

@Neevrah
Thank you…there is very little discussion or awareness about the multiple views on prostitution in general society. The debate is restricted to academic circles…more’s the pity.

@krish
By all means, do that. I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that one must watch pop culture — even when doesn’t agree with it.

@Nits
Exactly! You said it.

@Falstaff
Yes, good point. And a dangerous pipe dream to sell, don’t you think?

@chetan
huh? whatever.

@Niket
I’ve heard the treatment in Doghi was better.

@sunshine
Of course, it means something. Even ONE movie can be offensive when that one movie is made by a ‘respected’ filmmaker, stars some of the biggest names, and claims to be about Indian womanhood. It’s hardly positioned as a B-grade potboiler. And what do my expectations have to do with it anyway? If something in our pop culture is retrogressive, it is. The merit of a thing / work of art etc is regardless of what one ‘expects’ from it.

By: sunshine

sunshine — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:42:52 +0000

So you mean you expected something else from this movie? Come on now….everyone reads reviews, looks at promos before checking out the movie itself and just because we have ONE movie with “pavitrata” type dialogues does’nt mean anything! We have lots of different cinema coming out these days…….this is just one type….not the ONLY type

By: Niket

Niket — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:35:00 +0000

I read somewhere that this movie was based on Marathi film “Doghi.” Haven’t watched LCMD, but Doghi was a good movie.

By: chetan

chetan — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:02:29 +0000

you are an idiot!
its just a stupid movie.
if you start tracing feminism and what not in stupid bollywood movies then you are only going to get disappointed.
i think its you who has some issues rather than the movie.
it was supposed to be a stupid movie after all!
so be it!

By: Falstaff

Falstaff — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:17:17 +0000

Not to mention the escapist and potentially dangerous notion that a small town girl with tolerably good looks can just show up in Bombay and reinvent herself as a sophisticated call girl with “glam clothes, fancy cars and a to-die-for apartment”. I know very little about the sex trade in Bombay, but I think it’s safe to assume that that’s incredibly unlikely, if only because the majority of prostitutes don’t work in conditions anywhere near as rosy. As pipe dreams go, this one is up there with the old chestnut about the small town boy who arrives penniless in Bollywood and ends up becoming a big star.

By: Nits

Nits — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:11:28 +0000

What worries me more that the movie itself being bad is that even the critics who trash it don’t question the premise much. Just that it’s slow and boring and whatnot. This sort of review is more so in the blogosphere.

In contrast Chandni Bar was uncomfortable but a must watch. I don’t know why we should condone it just because it is a Bollywood movie. We impose these low standards on ourselves. Bollywood is mainstream and hence much more influential so it’s critical that there be some questioning process in film making.

It’s even more irritating that the film maker thinks that he is making a profound statement on womanhood when essentially he has done the opposite.

By: krishashok

krishashok — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:04:35 +0000

I was planning to watch this one. But my 90 year old grandmother read about this movie in a Tamil magazine and asked me what “Chunari” meant. I told her that it meant “Veil”, and then she asked me – “Why are they making movies about dogs on veils?”. Tamil cant distinguish between Dog and Daag so she read the title as “Laaga Chunari mein Dog”.
So I decided to dump that movie and watch a Tamil flick instead. But your review is tempting me to watch this one. I think Ill buy a 50 Rs pirated DVD and watch it.