That Girl In Yellow Boots is an unimpressive drama movie about the struggles of a British-Indian teenage girl, "Ruth" (Kalki Koechlin), searching for her Indian father in Mumbai who left her when she was 5. She does not have any pictures of him and does not even know how he looks. The movie starts with Ruth reading a letter by her father, expressing her love and desire for her, signed as "Arjun Patel". The story immediately moves to her struggle in a government office, to renew her visa. This struggle includes long queues, bribery and occasional flirting by officers (nothing new, everybody know this). Another struggle is her struggle for money. For this she did little sexual favors to her clients at her job at a massage parlor (nothing surprising here either, a very typical and widely used concept). Her third struggle was her boyfriend, who was a drug addict, a criminal and very demanding and non-understaning kinda guy (no innovation here either. In fact, if you remeber Abhay Deol of "Dev D", then you feel like it's just copy + paste done by Anurag Kashyap).
Anyways, then there were a few other people put in the movie just to enhace her struggles, like:
1. British consulate guy: He asked her to get her a contract by doing sexual favors to some of his business partners, in return of information about her father.
2. A gangster: He asked her to do sexual favors to him, in return of her boyfriend's debt to him.
3. Some government officer: He continuously increased the amount of money he used to charge her, finally asking for a sexual favor, in return of keeping his mouth shut to the visa office, concealing that she is working on a tourist visa (without a work permit).
4. Post Master: Who took money, in return of information about her father.
The movie after moving at a very steady pace reaches a climax at the very end, when Ruth finds out who her father is. Why her mother kicked him out of her life. Why he wrote the letter to call her to India etc., but by this time this seems like some secondary part of the story and not the primary objective of the story. Although, I would like to give credit for picking up a father who is an active member of the story and the revelation does come as a liitle bit of a surprise. Now, the ending again is a copy of "Dhobi Ghat" movie's ending. Disappointing.
Things to keep your eyes open for:
1. Kalki Koechlin's performance: The movie starts with her and ends with her, with hardly 2 or 3 scenes without her presence, as described by the line "Kalki Koechlin in and as The Girl In The Yellow Boots". This is her biggest part till date and she has done it justifiably well.
2. Cinematography: A good job has been done in this department, even if we are always in a tight space, be it Kalki's home or workplace. There is this one scene which is repeated 2 or 3 times, in which Kalki is smoking in the balcony of her workplace and just looking at the Mumbai traffic and people moving on the road below.
3. Sound Mixing: This has been quite noticable at a few places, e.g. there is a scene in which two telephonic conversations are merged and the effect has been quite good.
Things to ignore:
1. Background Score: The score was was missing at most of the places where it was needed and could have made a nice effect.
2.Editing: The editing was missing. The only noticable editing was between the very first and second scenes of the movie. With all these stories and characters, a hard work in this department could have given a very nice touch to the movie.
3. Direction: It could have been a great movie, but direction certainly let it down, or I should rather say "the lack of direction". It seemed like everyone was given free reign, well, in case of Kalki that was an advantage, but a director has to do a lot more than just managing the performances. There was no crafting done in the story, it was very crude, despite a few jokes forcefully added in the beginning to bind the audience. Monitoring was not done regarding the pace of the movie, it was flat and dropping till the climax.
Overall not an appreciable effort by anyone except Kalki and Rajeev Ravi (cinematographer). Hence, I rate it as follows:
Entertainment rating: 2.5
Critic's rating: 3
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