In his movie Fashion that released this week, Madhur Bhandarkar plays himself in a cameo. The frame catches him sitting in the front row of a fashion show, while characters whisper in awestruck tones that he is there researching his latest project—the fashion industry. This self-congratulatory pat on his back is possibly the least irksome part of Bhandarkar’s three-hour-fifteen-minute-long movie. Watching it in PVR, model Sonalika Sahay and designer

Vineet Bahl protest vehemently about the movie and Bhandarkar, who has built a reputation as a hard-hitting filmmaker doesn’t dumb down to appease the audience.

“It is very clichéd. He has strung together a few sensational events and tried to filter an opinion through them,” says Sahay. Sahay’s ire is directed at the screenplay of the movie—the story of three models: a small-town beauty pageant winner, played by Priyanka Chopra, who makes it big very fast, a supermodel played by Kangana Ranaut who is addicted to drugs and alcohol and a second-rung model, Mugdha Godse, who figures out how to hold her own in the big, bad world of modelling. Bhandarkar’s disclaimer at the beginning of the movie that all the characters and events are fictitious doesn’t ring true as a doped-out Ranaut lands up on the footpath a la Gitanjali Nagpal, and Chopra’s character descends into the allegedly murky side of fashion —dope, alcohol and rehab, much like England-educated Shivani Kapur did a couple of years back.

“Bhandarkar should have given the movie a broader perspective. This whole thing about small-town girls losing their heads in modelling is so insulting. I’m from Bihar and let me tell you, exploitation is a matter of choice,” says Sahay. “There’s a nicer side to the industry as well, like friendships and creativity.”

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