2005 film by Madhur Bhandarkar
Page 3 is a 2005 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Madhur Bhandarkar and produced by Bobby Pushkarna and Kavita Pushkarna about the Page 3 culture and media in the city of Mumbai. It stars Konkona Sen Sharma, Atul Kulkarni, Sandhya Mridul, Tara Sharma, Anju Mahendru, and Boman Irani. The film won three National Film Awards, including the Golden Lotus Award for Best Film.
Plot.
Madhavi Sharma is a young journalist who arrives in Mumbai looking for a job. She is hired by newspaper editor Deepak Suri and is assigned the task of reporting on celebrity news and writing articles for Page 3. Her roommate Pearl Sequiera is an air hostess who aims to marry a rich man so that she can have a lavish, exciting lifestyle. Gayatri Sachdeva, an aspiring actress, later joins them at the apartment. Gayatri becomes romantically involved with a leading actor, Rohit Kumar, and soon finds out that she is pregnant. Rohit is aware that the pregnancy will ruin his career, so he tells her to get an abortion. Depressed and shattered, Gayatri unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide and, in the process, loses her child. Meanwhile, Pearl marries a wealthy old man and moves to the United States, where she lives an extravagant but loveless life. Madhavi plans to expose Rohit by writing an article on his relationship with Gayatri, but her editor blocks the story, and she is forced to apologize to Rohit.
Madhavi finds that her boyfriend is bisexual; she finds him in bed with her best friend, Abhijeet. Soon, Madhavi becomes disillusioned with her job, and she realises that 'the party is over' for her - the celebrity lifestyle is not as glamorous as it seems. She requests to be moved to a different field and lands on the "crime beat" with Vinayak Mane. She accompanies Vinayak as they search the city for crime-related stories. On one such trip, they witness a bomb blast in the city, which affects Madhavi emotionally. She begins to investigate the story, but is made to cover a high-profile Bollywood party by Deepak. At the party, she comes across the ACP in charge of the bomb blast she witnessed, insensitively discussing the incident. Madhavi is shocked to find out that the ACP was attending a film shoot while he was on duty, which delayed his reaction to the blast.
Vinayak goes to cover another news story in Nashik, and Madhavi is asked to take charge of crime news. She learns that a number of boys from a rehabilitation home owned by Anjali Thapar have gone missing, and during the subsequent search, a number of boys could not be accounted for. The police find out that a group of boys are being held at the Thapar's private bungalow in Mud Island, but they do not have a search warrant. However, based on Madhavi's investigation, they conduct a raid. Ramesh Thapar has been molesting children from the rehabilitation home. Ramesh is arrested, and police also find a connection to other corporate personalities who are involved in the scandal. Madhavi manages to capture the whole event on camera and develops a breaking exposé story. She asks Deepak to run the story as the headline article for the next day's news edition, and he promises to look into the piece and put it on the front page. That same night Deepak meets with the owner of the newspaper, Mr. Agarwal, who is the best friend of Ramesh. Agarwal tells Deepak that the newspaper receives major advertisement revenue and other sponsorship from Ramesh. Fearing major loss to his business, Agarwal declines to publish the story and asks Deepak to fire Madhavi from the company.
Madhavi is summarily fired, and she is visited by Vinayak, who was missing during the raid. The raid was facilitated by Madhavi in Vinayak's absence, as it was Vinayak's informant who had tipped off about the boys being picked up. Vinayak consoles her and advises her that submitting all the evidence was a blunder from her side and also informs Madhavi that Thapar's wife committed suicide once she knew that Thapar was picking up boys regularly from her orphanage to exploit them sexually. Madhavi looks out for a job with no success. Madhavi finally does land a job, but the editor hires her on the condition that she handle Page 3, something she accepts with great reluctance.
When she visits to cover the first party for her new employer, she is shocked to see her old friend/roommate Gayathri, who seems to have bagged a new film, laughing and flirting with the same superstar who impregnated her and was responsible for her suicide attempt. She then sees her ex-boyfriend joking and being pals with her friend Abhijeet, with whom she had caught him in bed. Charu Mohanty, a filmmaker well known for women's empowerment films and who had tried molesting Gayathri during her audition, notices Madhavi's surprise and informs her that in this world of glitz, everything is fake, like in politics and the film industry, where there are no permanent friends or enemies. Madhavi nods understandingly and is seen walking away from the party.
Soundtracks.
All songs of this film were composed by Shamir Tandon. The soundtrack album was released on 11 September 2004 and contains 8 tracks in Standard Edition and 12 tracks in Complete Edition. Zubeen Garg and Mahalakshmi Iyer were supposed to sing a song for the film, but, due to unknown reason, both were opted out.
Box office.
The film opened to average opening but with positive word of mouth and raving reviews, it went on to do good business later and emerged a semi hit.
Awards.
2005 National Film Awards (India)
2005 Zee Cine Awards (India)
Won
Nominated
Death of Amit Ralli.
During principal photography, lead actor Amit Ralli died suddenly from jaundice due to hepatitis C. He was 26 at the time. He was replaced by Jai Kalra who made his Bollywood debut with this film.
References.
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