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Arth

1982 143’ col Hindi d/st/dial/co-sc Mahesh Bhatt pc Anu Arts co-sc Sujit Sen lyr Kaifi Azmi c Pravin Bhatt m Chitra Singh, Jagjit Singh lp Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Raj Kiran, Rohini Hattangadi, Siddharth Kak, Geeta Siddharth

Inder Malhotra (Kharbanda), a fashionable film-maker, is married to Pooja (Azmi) when he starts an affair with film star Kavita (Patil). Pooja leaves him and experiences the social insecurities of a single working woman. Her dilemmas are highlighted by the parallel story of her cleaning lady (Hattangadi) who, abandoned by her husband, kills him and is arrested. Kavita, who suffers from guilt and eventually succumbs to schizophrenia, leaves Inder. Bhatt’s breakthrough film benefited both from gossip suggesting, with Bhatt’s assistance, that it was autobiographical, and of a much- publicised rivalry between actresses Patil and Azmi. Bhatt continued producing sensationalised versions of wicked upper-class Bombay life, peppered with inane talk about art cinema (as in this film’s party sequence), paralleling e.g. gossip columnist Shobha De’s novels set in the film and advertising industries.

Film