With films like Black Friday, Dev D and Gulaal, the director Anurag Kashyap has created a peculiar brand of dark and devious movies, which are fascinating to watch. That Girl In Yellow Boots carries forward the same tradition.

Written by Kashyap and his wife Kalki, this film tells a story of a ‘firang’ girl running away from her mother’s home in UK to find her long-estranged father in Mumbai. Besides a recently received loving letter from her father, the girl does not have any other clue to identify him. Working as a masseuse in a shady spa, leaving behind all norms of dignity and staying in a junkie boy-friend’s flat, she runs from pillar to post to find her father. Will her desperate search come to fruition? Will she finally find the solace she is seeking?

The film presents a slice of life, little known to most viewers and quite shocking in its content. The myriad challenges for a single foreigner young girl staying and surviving in Mumbai are depicted with a scathing directness. Kashyap’s situations and character-sketches are brilliant. The foreigner girl, the drug-addict boyfriend, the quirky South Indian gangster, the ‘constantly on phone’ spa-manager, the various government servants and spa customers- practically every character stays in memory thanks to their realistic portrayals.

Essentially it is Kalki ‘s movie and she impressively carries off the central role, which demands toughness and vulnerability in equal measures. Looking at her you feel for the girl, who is facing frustrations of an unending heart-breaking search, while surviving in a foreign land of lechers. Her looks, her accent, her demeanor – everything is just perfect. It is definitely her best role to date.

But one actor still succeeds in upstaging her and he is Gulshan Devaiya, who in his brief role as a gangster lights up the screen and lightens up the mood. He for me was the find from the film.

Even though it cleverly mixes hard-hitting ground-reality with ample measures of intrigue and drama, That Girl In Yellow Boots is not a film made for the box-office. But still it is yet another welcome addition to the new-age Hindi cinema!