Director Ashim Ahluwalia says there are similarities between sex-horror tales of 80s and indie cinema. He tells Karan Bhardwaj that his film is a bit of every genre
You would rarely find a filmmaker who would admit to being a great fan of sleazy sex-horror cinema of 80s, which was no less than a film industry in itself running parallel to Bollywood. But director Ashim Ahluwalia has no qualms to make this candid confession. In his own words, where else one would find a naked womanIJ Today, Ahluwalia is ready to floor the audience with his internationally-acclaimed movie Miss lovely, which delves into the decade-old world of B-C-D grade movies of sex and horror. “When I was studying I would watch such films with my friends. When I came back after my graduation in filmmaking from US’ Bard College, I was confused. I couldn’t adjust to the cinema here. It was either art house films, or parallel films, which were anti-commercial or the mainstream. I always wanted to do my kind of cinema which would derive inspiration from all these forms. So Miss lovely is a combination of all the genres. It is pulpy, it is dark, it has songs and it has sex,” says the director.
Ahluwalia, who has seen all the explicit movies of that era, finds similarities between them and indie cinema. “They are rebellious and were made on shoestring budget. I got interested in them because the atmosphere was exciting. Something which people defy but still watch with great enthusiasm,” he says. Miss lovely was not the first attempt by the director on this subject. In fact, it is the result of all the research done for a documentary. For two years, Ahluwalia worked on the documentary, collected all the material but things couldn’t materialise. “People were not keen to talk about it on screen. They were apprehensive. So I chose to make a full feature film and wrote a screenplay,” he informs.
Today, the fact that Miss lovely competed in Un Certain Regard category at Festival De Cannes in 2012, and it will now release across 455 screens in India on January 17, followed by French and American release in February and March respectively, looks like a dream. “It’s a beautiful surprise. We never expected it to become such a big phenomenon. It was never meant to be a commercial movie. It was just an attempt to do something new. In fact, I never imagined it would release in India due to its adult content. But it’s cult. I think it would have been unfortunate to not release it in India. Nawazuddin Siddique, who’s a poster boy today, was still a struggler when we signed him. Today, he and the film both are going places,” he says.
Miss lovely had its share of issues with the Censor Board. “They asked me to delete almost the entire film. But I argued and reasoned if nude scenes are kept in Hollywood flicks why cannot they be shown in our movies. Then we settled down to blur few scenes,” he shares.
With the successes of films like The lunchbox, Ship of Theseus and Shahid, Ahluwalia has reasons to be hopeful. But he doesn’t think cinema has changed. “I think it’s just the beginning. I won’t call it a new wave. One good thing that has happened is that films are looked from director’s perspective. The role of a director has become more important than ever before. But if you look at the small and successful films, they all different from each other. So it’s difficult to say where we are moving as of now,” he said.
The filmmaker is already in talks with studios for couple of projects and is writing a screenplay for an Italian film. “It is set in Italy of 16th century. It’s not a classic film but about the bad boys,” he shared. The film is being produced by the European producers.