"Meri Beti Sunny Leone Banna Chaahti Hai" or "My Daughter Wants to Be a Pornstar" is an indian hindi-language movie from 2017, so this one is 1.5 years old now roughly and in these 18 months it scored 5 million views on youtube which isn't too shabby. The director is Ram Gopal Varma and he is a pretty prolific filmmaker, maybe the most prolific attached to this short film next to the only male actor who is also enjoying a long career. The film runs for slightly over 11 minutes and it is about a young Indian woman telling her parents that she wants to have a career in the adult industry going by the alias of Sunny Leone. Okay, people here in the western world would not have liked the idea that much honestly and India is still a completely different location. Now, there are many problems with this film though. It tries to make a statement pro women, not just in film, but in general, which is generally a good idea, but the execution here feels shoddy and pseudo-important. The lead actress is not particularly good, you can clearly see she has all the lines and what she is saying in her head and it feels forced and stale. This could have worked taking into account how the character may have prepared all she said beforehand too, but no it just doesn't, also because there are scenes when she is supposed to answer her father spontaneously. The parents are a joke in terms of how they were written honestly delivering nothing but outrage and tears while never getting one centimeter under the surface. And all this while the film clearly takes itself so seriously. This movie is emancipation all gone wrong to be honest and it has the exact opposite effect. The final weak moment is when the director included a quote by himself in the closing credits. I mean can you be any more full of yourself? This is really an important subject and while I think emancipation in the western world is at a point where equality is almost there and you should not believe people telling you otherwise, India has a lot to work on in that department still. This film is not a help whatsoever. Watch something else instead.
2 Reviews
How to shock the most without never really making an impact
Horst_In_Translation6 February 2019
Warning: Spoilers
RGV got GUTS
annarbor-9178411 June 2017
Start note, you can watch this short film for free, on www.YouTube.com website. This is unlike most other films. Hey what about a trailer. Can production make one, it'l be cool! Lets see if the trailer niches itself. ;)
If for some reason you can't succeed to open and view the film, it maybe due to location restrictions set by film owner, www.YouTube.com term policy, or a foreign country government has forciby blocked the content, by using one or more of the many ways used to block stuff on the internet, just because it's against their stupid culture! In such a case, use internet bittorrent tech to search and view the film, if you can't do yourself, ask for help to someone, who knows how to find stuff that is blocked, or knows using bittorent tech.
Revolutionary and Gamechanger. Courage is required to challenge current culture, and try to change it. And this 12 minute short film has elements of these. Indian culture is mid to moderate, between fundamentalist, conservative, strict - and totally open, democratic, free, liberal, western. And this film tries to make a cultural change, at least by whoever is seeing it, even if they're maybe 0.01% of the population. And I will term anyone that tries to do that - Great. If you don't have power, it takes great courage to challenge majority, when majority is wrong. And since you are not majority, you mostly don't have power! I used words fundamentalist, conservative and strict, note that, in various cultures in the globe, they mean very different things, dictated by the culture in that respective area. So this going as far as saying, this is the kind of film that has potential to be banned even - which is also one more reason this film is great. For one, try this film in Arab culture, it will get banned, as soon as its smoke is seen, if you know what i mean. ;)
What is great in this film. This short film challenges the current position of a female, a woman in current global mid- democratic society. Mid-liberal means, between strict and liberal. This film challenges the relation between female and sex as viewed by global culture. And sex is part subject too, because of its controversial forbidden taboo thing to discuss. And why is it so, because sex somehow got highly regulated in human evolution over thousands of years, and this is not as deep as most people will dive! And why it got highly regulated, is related to many other things in human evolution which i will not discus here.
Why this film is great. This film uses no props or equipment, just a simple home set. And what is striking, is it uses simple talk! Simple talk, to relate to chars to each other, to relate us - audience to topic chars are discussing. And it uses simple talk! Simple talk, to convey message to us - viewers. And it's a job not Well done, its a job Great done.
Such a simple talk style, in which message delivery is the intent, like in this film, such message delivery cannot be done by most people, only few with verbal skill. An excellent example is, if you've listened to speeches of good - really good lawyers in court, to prove their point, to deliver their message. These Great lawyers mostly don't use props or things to prove, they use simple talk, and they know exactly how to execute it. The girl's char does it like that. Char is short for character.
This film is short, and every moment in it was contributory, in what was being said and understood, mainly - verbal input of the girl, and verbal and bodylingua reactions of the parents. So I say - this film didn't steal much my time too. Full value for every second spent!
Subtitle translation to English is great also - I will rate at 9 of 10, as the translation has been tweaked to be understood by a global audience, which must be done in some cases, or the exact translation may change the story, because of a difference in culture in different locations around the globe.
A few nagative points of the film are - last words at the end of the lines of the girl, and the father, cannot be heard clear, due to premature ending of speech, thus cutting the last word. In such cases, I have to rewind and replay the lines, but this problem with the actor and actress is maybe 3% of their all lines, in the film, so their job is still great. 2nd negative point is - the color and lighting has a brown tint and no colorful like common soaps and films, which makes it dull, maybe this color scheme was to match the subject theme, which is tension between chars and culture, but i don't know.
Me? I rarely review anything, I will only timespend on something that is different, revolutionary and superspecial! And this film qualifies, so this review is my reciprocation. Gamechangers such as this film must get a highly sought award even, like a India National Film Award, i said India, as this film has origin here. Though it's story applies to American and Western mainstream culture too. You will know after you see and listen, just turn on subtitle and choose English, if you don't know the Indian Hindi lingua.
Another note here, culture and society use the Shame emotion to command our behaviour. This film challenges that also. In a word - Great!
If for some reason you can't succeed to open and view the film, it maybe due to location restrictions set by film owner, www.YouTube.com term policy, or a foreign country government has forciby blocked the content, by using one or more of the many ways used to block stuff on the internet, just because it's against their stupid culture! In such a case, use internet bittorrent tech to search and view the film, if you can't do yourself, ask for help to someone, who knows how to find stuff that is blocked, or knows using bittorent tech.
Revolutionary and Gamechanger. Courage is required to challenge current culture, and try to change it. And this 12 minute short film has elements of these. Indian culture is mid to moderate, between fundamentalist, conservative, strict - and totally open, democratic, free, liberal, western. And this film tries to make a cultural change, at least by whoever is seeing it, even if they're maybe 0.01% of the population. And I will term anyone that tries to do that - Great. If you don't have power, it takes great courage to challenge majority, when majority is wrong. And since you are not majority, you mostly don't have power! I used words fundamentalist, conservative and strict, note that, in various cultures in the globe, they mean very different things, dictated by the culture in that respective area. So this going as far as saying, this is the kind of film that has potential to be banned even - which is also one more reason this film is great. For one, try this film in Arab culture, it will get banned, as soon as its smoke is seen, if you know what i mean. ;)
What is great in this film. This short film challenges the current position of a female, a woman in current global mid- democratic society. Mid-liberal means, between strict and liberal. This film challenges the relation between female and sex as viewed by global culture. And sex is part subject too, because of its controversial forbidden taboo thing to discuss. And why is it so, because sex somehow got highly regulated in human evolution over thousands of years, and this is not as deep as most people will dive! And why it got highly regulated, is related to many other things in human evolution which i will not discus here.
Why this film is great. This film uses no props or equipment, just a simple home set. And what is striking, is it uses simple talk! Simple talk, to relate to chars to each other, to relate us - audience to topic chars are discussing. And it uses simple talk! Simple talk, to convey message to us - viewers. And it's a job not Well done, its a job Great done.
Such a simple talk style, in which message delivery is the intent, like in this film, such message delivery cannot be done by most people, only few with verbal skill. An excellent example is, if you've listened to speeches of good - really good lawyers in court, to prove their point, to deliver their message. These Great lawyers mostly don't use props or things to prove, they use simple talk, and they know exactly how to execute it. The girl's char does it like that. Char is short for character.
This film is short, and every moment in it was contributory, in what was being said and understood, mainly - verbal input of the girl, and verbal and bodylingua reactions of the parents. So I say - this film didn't steal much my time too. Full value for every second spent!
Subtitle translation to English is great also - I will rate at 9 of 10, as the translation has been tweaked to be understood by a global audience, which must be done in some cases, or the exact translation may change the story, because of a difference in culture in different locations around the globe.
A few nagative points of the film are - last words at the end of the lines of the girl, and the father, cannot be heard clear, due to premature ending of speech, thus cutting the last word. In such cases, I have to rewind and replay the lines, but this problem with the actor and actress is maybe 3% of their all lines, in the film, so their job is still great. 2nd negative point is - the color and lighting has a brown tint and no colorful like common soaps and films, which makes it dull, maybe this color scheme was to match the subject theme, which is tension between chars and culture, but i don't know.
Me? I rarely review anything, I will only timespend on something that is different, revolutionary and superspecial! And this film qualifies, so this review is my reciprocation. Gamechangers such as this film must get a highly sought award even, like a India National Film Award, i said India, as this film has origin here. Though it's story applies to American and Western mainstream culture too. You will know after you see and listen, just turn on subtitle and choose English, if you don't know the Indian Hindi lingua.
Another note here, culture and society use the Shame emotion to command our behaviour. This film challenges that also. In a word - Great!
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