Paoli Dam-Gulshan Devayiah take on censor board

By Subhash K. Jha -

March 22, 2012 - 11:50 AM IST

Paoli Dam-Gulshan Devayiah take on censor board

"Main iss shehar ki sabse badi randi ban-na chahti hoon (I want to the biggest whore in town)...I f**k those who f**k with me." These are not lines from a blue film, but Bengali sizzler Paoli Dam's dialogues in Vivek Agnihotri's 'uncensored trailer' of Hate Story which is currently gone viral on the internet.

There are also repeated sequences of Paoli going nude and a rather unsettling shot of actor(Joy Sengupta) grabbing her upper torso.

And if you think this is just for the internet, then wait. Vivek Agnihotri, actress Pallavi Joshi's husband, who has earlier made the thriller Chocolate and the football film Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, is not going to let the censor board chop off any of the nudity or profanity in the trailer, let alone the film.

Says Agnihotri, "My film is not one of those Bollywood erotic thrillers where we see a glimpse of a bra strap or a silhouette of a woman's underwear, or tantalizing peek at the cleavage or the thigh. My actress is nude on camera. We've gone all the way thanks to my lead pair Paoli Dam and Gulshan Devaiya who didn't hesitate in getting naked for the camera. Paoli is a profound actress with no inhibitions about her body. A rare combination. Our profound actresses are all middle-aged. The last one was Kajol."

If the content and the actors are so unabashed in the celebration of sexuality, the director sees no reason for the censor to get coy. "Let them decide. My film is as bold as the German erotic thrillers. There's no coyness about the sex act. If my heroine aspires to be a randi she says so...and why should she not? It's the characters that's stripping and saying all those things. I am unwilling to dilute the content. If the censor board asks for the trailer to be toned down I'll withdraw the trailer."

So far love-making scenes in Hindi films have always been kept under covers. We hear the rule has changed, and how! The hot and uninhibited Bengali actress Paoli Dam already known for her no-holds-barred nudity in Bengali cinema, has apparently gone all the way with her co-star Gulshan Devaiya (of Shaitan fame) in Hate Story.

Apparently, the love scenes were done without a smudge of fudging. Says Agnihotri, "I had explained to Paoli that I didn't want to sham the nudity or the love-making. She understood what her character was supposed to do. I expected my leading man to be shy. Usually in our films it's the male who has more inhibitions about stripping, kissing and love-making. There's too much performance anxiety in the male. Gulshan was every bit as unabashed as Paoli. What we've captured in the film is the kind of explicit love-making never seen in Hindi films."

Agnihotri hopes the censor board would display as much maturity in evaluating the high erotic-content of his film as it deserves. "This is a film about sex and sexuality. The actors don't fake the nudity and the love-making. If they are acknowledging their authentic intentions why should the censor board negate them?" reasons Agnihotri.