Anurag Kashyap (“Water”) delivers another stunningly controversial masterpiece with “That Girl In Yellow Boots”.  True to form as one of India’s leading modern indie filmmakers, this film will bedazzle and shock you. Kashyap takes us on a colourful and dangerous journey through the underbelly of Bombay experienced through the eyes of Ruth (Kalki Koechlin).

Kalki Koechlin (winner, best supporting actress Filmfare, “Dev. D”) co wrote this sizzling script with Kashyap. Every character is remarkably fleshed out from Ruth herself to the thugs running drug rackets and the girls and their clients in the massage parlour. The growing reality of the size of the sex trade in India inspired Kashyap to conceive of this story and to collaborate with Koechlin on the script.

The story itself has a universal theme that sadly knows no boundaries.  It is fascinating to know the characters and experience the depths of their anguish as their stories unfold. We never meet Ruth’s mother but we can understand her actions and her estrangement from Ruth by the end of the movie. Ironically, she is actually the catalyst who propels Ruth onwards in the pursuit of her father; the very man that her mother is trying to keep her from, whose memory she has gone to great lengths to erase from Ruth’s life.

Ruth is determined to find the man she naively believes will provide her with the loving security she feels at twenty is the answer to this deep longing for someone to care for her unconditionally.  Ruth travels to India to find her Bengali father whom she has not seen or heard from for years except for one letter. She finds herself searching on her own in a foreign country on meager resources, even learning Hindi.  Everyone she encounters seems to be slimy and corrupt, if not outright dangerous. “That Girl In Yellow Boots” is a confident and naïve young woman when we first meet her but as the layered story is revealed and the truth is told, her reality changes significantly, and by the end of the movie the audience is left with much bigger questions to think about.

A remarkable, timely and hard hitting film made by a talented filmmaker.

Moira Romano