That movie called... That Girl In Yellow Boots

That movie called... That Girl In Yellow Boots

Yes that is all we know about this girl... that she wears unusual yellow boots. How else would you differentiate her from the sea of people in Mumbai. That Girl in Yellow Boots is a journey of innocence in the dark alley of insanity. A world, where everything is right and yet everything is wrong. Or perhaps what we perceive right is only a mirage made up of a lot of false.

Kalki Koechlin as the expat, Ruth, from England gives a slice of life of the thousands of foreigners that settle here.  Beyond the brands, the money and seemingly casual attitude is a persona deeply in search of a simple life. Her character has its strength in its vulnerability.

Shot with mostly a ‘fly on the wall’ camera technique, the camera is as honest as the protagonist in her search to find out her long lost father.  An unapologetic account of life in the metro city, nowhere does the film intend it’s audience to feel sympathetic. The audience is but a mute spectator of Ruth’s (Kalki) patient journey in trying to locate her father.

Slow as the film is, it has some of the best encounters depicted in truest sense of realism. Specially the sequence where the local Don gatecrashes her house and robs her of her hard earned money. Most importantly, That Girl in Yellow Boots, bordering on existentialism draws questions between the acceptable and the unacceptable. It questions the sanity of human relationships with no concrete answers really.

Notably different style of story- telling, the direction, and imagery speaks volumes of an emerging fresh new wave in Indian cinema by Anurag Kashyap and his likes.  The climax is subtle and intriguing than dramatic. It urges us to find out more about what happens to Ruth, than what happens in the film. The end leaves the audience in the daze, wondering what to think. An emotionless, apt end to a film about abused relationships, the long tracking shot does remind of the classic end in Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (400 Blows) leaving the audience sinking into the emotion as the protagonist leaves the screen.

-        By Prachi Mujumdar-Kurlekar