Fashion

Madhur Bhandarkar

India

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Synopsis

The rise, fall, and rebirth of India's number one supermodel, set against the glittering backdrop of the glamorous but ruthless world of haute couture fashion.

REVIEW

Megha Mathur is a girl from a village in India who has come to cosmopolitan Mumbai hot on the high heels of a career as a fashion model.  "Fashion" tells the story of Meghan's meteoric rise to superstardom in the glittery world of Mumbai fashion, her discovery of its tarnished underbelly, and the harrowing price she pays to remain at the top. 

With its stunning sets, enchanting music, and powerful performances, "Fashion" is a palpable slice of the glamorous life in India's fashion capital, a guilty pleasure in which you can smell perfume and sweat and sense blind ambition and its gilded price.  The storyline is traditional yet commanding in its simplicity and uncompromising in execution.

With unflinching intensity director Madhur Bhandarkar follows the ups and downs of three gorgeous girls on the Mumbai fashion trail: behind the scenes, walking the treacherous tightrope between fame and infamy, or strutting their stuff down a ramp in a series of knockout fashion shows.

Megha, the beautiful but beset small town girl is the central figure. Shonali is a star of the first magnitude, whose light is about to turn to dust. Finally, there is Janet, another struggling young model who yearns for success. Theirs is a world where contracts have no-pregnancy, no-marriage clauses, and a model's integrity is expendable.

The film captures the sorrow and the irony of these pretty, often underappreciated girls. Fashion also looks at the dilemma of male models, marginal at best and destined to get nowhere near the ramp unless they are willing to sleep with gay designers, of which the film has its ample and flamboyant share.

What makes this film so exciting is its sense of reality, captured in Bhandarkar's flare for visual detail and high style, his three stunning leads, and a choice ensemble cast of supporting players that includes the media, modeling agency bigwigs, and aggressive buyers.  It's all there in shots of eyes outlined in kohl and burnished cleavages, in backstage life and the scramble for front row seats. What "Fashion" is really about is the hearts and souls of the models, and what it means and what it takes to be one of them.

-Jeff Gorney