Miss Lovely Director Ashim Ahluwalia’s next is a super-hero film

From a film about sex sleaze scandal and self-degradation in the horror-porn industry to an out-and-out fantasy about a super-hero, Ashim Ahluwalia the director of the much-lauded Miss Lovely is moving on. Ashim is all set to do a movie version of the super-hero character Bahadur created by Abid Surati for Indrajal comics. Unlike super-hero films like Ra.One and Krrish, Bahadur won’t emulate Hollywood’s super-hero formula but forge its own identity. Says Ashim. “Yes, I’ve been approached to make a Hindi superhero film, but very different - an Indrajal comic book character – which is interesting and I can relate to.” Bathed in the shower of encomiums for Miss Lovely nationally and globally, the avant-garde director says, “When Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas was screened at the Midnight Section of Cannes many years ago, a section of the international press mistook it for a parody. I don’t think with the newer Hindi films coming out now, we are in the same situation. A film like Miss Lovely will now release in France, Japan and in the US in April. That’s a huge shift – and it will be amazing that they will get to see “our” India and not just the Slumdog Millionaire version.” Ashim got away with graphic scenes of love-making and even bare breasts in Miss Lovely. Errrr, how come? “I wasn’t making a C grade film, but I definitely needed to have the film make you feel like you were within that universe – humid and sleazy. It needed to sometimes have very cheap-looking Ramsay lighting, and yet, other times it needed to be realistic and poetic, a very atmospheric film. I think these combinations make it both “sasta” and “high art” simultaneously. I spent over a year and met everybody in the C grade industry including all the stalwarts like Joginder, who were surprisingly open and welcoming.” Ashim came away very impressed by the censor board’s liberality. “I told them that if the protagonists work in C-grade film industry, how can they talk in family language? I talked to them about other films that have released with hardcore language. So every time I went back, I would argue for them to drop a cut. And I have to say, I was completely blown away by how willing they were to have a conversation about the film. I told them that if they deleted the nude scenes, no one would understand the context of the film. When I saw Paul Anderson’s The Master, it had blurs in nude scenes. How come an Indian film gets deletion whereas a Hollywood film gets a blur? They said it’s different because it’s a Hollywood film. I said it doesn’t matter where a naked body comes from, it’s the same thing. Then they accepted it and I got blurs instead of deletions. So they were very fair which I hadn’t expected.”