An expose of the world of Indian celebrity journalism sounds like an interesting subject for a film, and it’s to the credit of ‘Page 3′ that it carries its narrative entertainingly, at least for the first two hours - in truth, it would have benefited from a little more editing. But the film also has some more serious limitations: the plot and dialogue are both simplistic, and the underlying socio-economic analysis is weak. Indeed, the movie even seems a little in love with the glamorous world it is trying to satirise. What ended up most intriguing (to this European viewer, at least) was the glimpse provided into the astonishingly westernised world of the Indian elite; and the strange, Anglo-Hindi hybrid tongue in which they speak. But to really understand the patterns of life in contemporary Bombay, you’ll need to find a deeper film.

As a showbiz reporter, Madhavi writes for page 3 of a daily tabloid (for those unfamiliar with the world of Indian newspapers, page 3 carries celebrity gossip and society news) and attends party after party.She shares a flat with a talkative but good-at-heart airhostess Pearl (Sandhya Mridul) and sensitive struggling starlet, Gayatri (Tara Sharma).Gayatri begins a romance with Bollywood star, Rohit (Bikram Saluja) while Pearl finds herself a rich millionaire to make life easy for herself.

After these flatmates depart, Madhavi is left on her own.And on her own, she makes some drastic decisions such as switching from entertainment news to crime beat after her conscience is pricked at by crime reporter, Vinayak (Atul Kulkarni).Here, she sees the grim side of life and from this step into reality; the world of showbiz starts to look even more ugly. The suicide of a respected socialite makes Madhavi question the purpose of her life.Madhavi´s aim to get the truth out into the public has her clashing with her editor, Deepak (Boman Irani).

The grim ending shows Madhavi being sucked back into the world of showbiz once again and meeting many familiar faces who have changed, either for the better or for the worse. As she leaves, the party behind her carries on pumping up the volume showing that this glittery world that is trapped in its own fantasy will carry on forever, come what may.

Video Source: DVD
Host: Megaupload
Chapters: 10

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
part 10