Tale of a Naughty Girl
3BACK
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Review by Steve Gravestock of the Toronto International Film Festival

"Mind, body ? All men care about is their dangling few inches."
 
Buddhadeb Dasgupta has long been considered one of the major forces in Indian cinema (hardly news to those who saw his last film The Wrestlers at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival). The poetic and haunting A Tale of a Naughty Girl doesn't just reaffirm this assumption; it underscores it in the most vivid way possible. Dasgupta's latest finds poetry and hope in the darkest and least hopeful places. Set at the time of the first moon landing, this poignant film recounts a pubescent Lati's overwhelming need to escape her small town provincial life and the tawdry destiny that awaits her, contrasting NASA's technocratic victory with the travails of a small town prostitute's daughter.
 
The film opens with the ostensible villain, wealthy businessman and cinema owner Badu, as he watches rape scenes from contemporary cinema, clipped together on a specially produced reel. The ultimate object of his more tactile lust is the virginal Lati, whose mother is determined to escape her dreary, doomed existence (age is catching up with her) by properly marrying off her daughter. Instead, the educated Lati dreams of leaving Gospaira, a town so disreputable cabbies won't even go there. Dasgupta juxtaposes Lati's tale with the history of the women who wind up in the trade: one is tossed out by her husband; another supports hers. These women know they're in a version of hell, but steel themselves with cynical humor. All of which only make Lati's determined attempt to escape her fate all the more touching.
 
Exquisitely photographed and designed, A Tale of a Naughty Girl contrasts ethereal elements (long shots set the characters against a starkly beautiful backdrop; Lati is consistently framed against the moon, a symbol of escape) with an all too worldly reality. Close-ups of a rotting tree underline Badu's motives. Yet, in the same forest, Lati sees the teacher who has opened her eyes to the world, a reminder of what's possible.
 
In some ways, despite its period setting, the film seems utterly contemporary, implicitly contrasting Badu's obsession with violence against women with our own violent and image obsessed culture. It may just be worthy of that overused term masterpiece, and it could, possibly, revivify it.