Bold posters: Do you dare?

Increasingly bold posters are being used to promote Bollywood films.

NEW DELHI: Chiselled abdomens, cleavage, the body contour — Bollywood film-makers are zooming in on women’s curves to create titillating posters, aimed at crucial first week collections.

The first look of Vikram Bhatt’s production Hate Story creates a mystery about the woman in the picture but sends out the right message about the film’s content — bold and daring. It has a mystery girl with her bare, tattooed back visible and a gun placed strategically at the back of her jeans. “Hate Story is a brave film. Of course, everyone wants eyeballs for the film, but one can’t have a sizzling poster and then have nothing inside the film,” Bhatt told IANS.

Film historian SMM Ausaja, who has a book Bollywood In Posters to his credit, has an interesting observation. “All film-makers are desperately trying to cover their costs in their first week. To cover that, they uncover women in posters,” said Ausaja. “I feel the film industry has come to a stage where even if a film has 10 per cent sensual content, film-makers try to cash in on it with such gimmicks.”

Until the Hate Story poster was launched last week, the first look of Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt’s Jism 2 and Blood Money were talk of the town. Jism 2, a movie which promises to be more sensual than its prequel Jism, has Indo-Canadian porn star Sunny Leone, lying naked with a wet white sheet covering her. The shot is bold, yet subtly seductive — enough to generate curiosity.

The poster of Blood Money, on the other hand, is more direct and in-the-face, with Amrita Puri dressed in a bikini, striking a suggestive pose with a bare-chested Kunal Khemu, both lying in a pool of money.

Additionally, in recent times, Bollywood has seen an array of films with suggestive posters: The Dirty Picture, Sahib Biwi Aur Gangster, Dum Maaro Dum, Dev D, Kurbaan, Julie, Paap among others. IANS

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2012.