The Role

Based on a book by one of Bombay's movie queens from the '40s, this sometimes looks like one of those riproaring melodramas through which Joan Crawford used to suffer so splendiferously. But put together with deceptive skill, it draws remarkable riches from its interlocking of past and present as the movie star heroine - saddled with a workshy husband, breadwinner for her entire family, but not allowed even a chequebook of her own - simultaneously tries to break out of her sexist cage and to understand how she came to be locked into it. The result is a complex exploration of female emancipation, making striking use of the Hindi cinema (wonderful parodies of the traditional Madras Curry, with its stoic, self-sacrificing heroines) as setting, symbol and catalyst.