i am the very beautiful

if all documentary seems to be in one way or the other exploitative of its subject matter, what does one make of a film that follows the story of an bar singer and her life and loves? her story is has all the ingredients of a grisly epic drama; a teenage pregnancy, a failed marriage, numerous loves and losses, a suicide (murder?) attempt and the fleeting love of innumerable strangers. this would all be pretty much unwatchable if it were not for the filmmaker implicating himself along with us in participating with the construction of the story. self-consciously displaying his own strange friendship with her, and his obsession for her, the film destroys any clarity about the ‘real’ story. the body of ranu scarred and mutilated by burns repels as much as it attracts. the camera lingers over the scars longingly marking her body with our gaze, and implicating us in the process- as clean - and guilty as such. her body is offered as evidence of our own inability to stay outside the story. it appears dressed, undressed, described and caressed, eroticized and brutalized equally. ruthless in its inversions of looker and looked, sexual rights and wrongs, the film makes us suspend all possibilities of judgment. thoroughly brilliant.