The Lipstick Under My Burkha Hindi Movie Review

Movie Name	LipStick Under My Burkha
Release Date	21-Jul-17
Language	Hindi
Cast and Crew	Konkona Sen Sharma,Ratna Pathak ,Plabita Borthakur,Aahana Kumrah
Music Director	Zebunnisa Bangash
Director	Alankrita Shrivastava
Producer	Prakash Jha

Lipstick Under My Burkha movie cast:Ratna Pathak Shah, Konkona Sensharma, Aahana Kumra, Plabita Borthakur, Vikrant Massey, Sushant Singh, Shashank Arora, Vaibhav Tatwawaadi, Jagat Singh Solanki
Lipstick Under My Burkha movie director:Alankrita Shrivastava
Lipstick Under My Burkha rating: 3.5 stars

Sometimes the threat of a ban is the best thing to happen to a film. Especially if the filmmakers decide to fight back, and win: from being the kind of film which potentially could have remained a festival-fringe, Lipstick Under My Burkha has arrived in theatres this week, all guns blazing, giving us the finger. And I can tell you that it’s absolutely worth your time, and your thoughts: this is exactly the kind of film we need more of, with its deep, personal, political and powerful look into women’s lives, which says what it needs to, and makes its points, without being preachy or polemical, or beating our heads with it.

Four women, based in Bhopal, going about their lives. At one level, it’s as simple as that, the happenings in the film. On another, the particularity of their situation has universal resonance. And through the comings and goings, Lipstick Under My Burkha draws an unerring picture of how women are bound, by convention and tradition, and of their inner lives and other bonds which keep them going.

Ratna Pathak Shah’s ‘Buaaji’ is the matriarch of a crumbling mansion that is on the radar of greedy corporators and a bunch of rent-seekers. Buaaji is the moral centre of Hawai Mahal, and her being a manifestly chaste middle-aged widow allows her to wield authority over the other residents, which includes the other three women, and their families.

Shireen (Konkona Sensharma) is the mother of three, and put-upon wife of a boor (Sushant Singh) who believes that wives are useful strictly to bear and rear offspring, and be pliant bed-warmers. ‘Biwi ho, biwi ki tarah hi raho’. Leela (Aahana Kumra) runs a hole-in-the-wall beauty parlour where the ‘mohalla’-women come to get threading-and-waxing jobs. Leela is a frankly sexual creature, and doesn’t care who knows it: whether it is ‘boy-friend’ (Vikrant Massey), or potential groom (Vaibhav Tatwawaadi). And the youngest, college-going Miley Cyrus fan Rihana (Plabita Borthakur) is struggling to find her voice, literally and metaphorically. Her orthodox parents are as stifling, as is the cruel assessment of her cool status, or the lack of it, by her smart college-mates.