Director: Shyam Benegal; Writer: Shama Zaidi, Satyadev Dubey, Shyam Benegal, Ghulam Abbas; Producer: Freni M. Variava, Lalit M. Bijlani; Cinematographer: Ashok Mehta; Editor: Bhanudas Divakar; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Saeed Jaffrey, Om Puri, Sreela Majumdar, Harish Patel, Neena Gupta, Soni Razdan, Ila Arun, Geeta Siddharth, Aditya Bhattacharya, Sunila Pradhan, Anita Kanwar, Ratna Pathak, Pankaj Kapoor, K.K. Raina, Satish Kaushik, Khokha Mukherji, Athar Nawaz, Raj Narasimha Rao, Aslam Farshuri, Sita Ram, Swadesh Pal, Milena Marques, A. Lakshmi, Monisha Banerjee, Aruna, Abdul Aziz, Azim Aziz, Bela, Lilabai Deshpande, G.S. Deshmukh, M. Quddus Ahmed, Murali, Annu Kapoor, Ashay Chitre
Duration: 02:42:20; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 33.961; Saturation: 0.076; Lightness: 0.324; Volume: 0.201; Cuts per Minute: 6.616; Words per Minute: 40.879
Summary: Apparently inspired by The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas (Colin Higgins, 1982),
Benegal’s rare venture into comedy touches on
religion and politics via the motif of
prostitution. Brothel madam Rukmini (Azmi)
tries to make her ‘girls’ conform to the timehonoured
traditions of a kotha (a brothel
where music and dance flourish). The women’s
mischievousness forces the establishment to
find another home. Problems arise when
Sushil, the son of Major Agarwal (Jaffrey), a
local notable, falls in love with the prostitute
Zeenat (Patil), Agarwal’s illegitimate daughter.
Instead, Sushil is supposed to marry the
neurotic daughter of Mr Gupta (Kharbanda), a
property developer who makes the brothel
shift locations yet again in order to separate
Sushil from Zeenat. The film was based on a classic Urdu short story Aanandi by Pakistani writer Ghulam Abbas.
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