That Girl in Yellow Boots

In filmmaker Anurag Kashyap's drama, half-Indian/half-English Ruth (Kalki Koechlin) arrives in Mumbai in search of her father, who deserted the family when she was a child. Unfortunately, she has no idea where to find him within the chaotic city. Ruth rents a crummy apartment and gets work at an unlicensed massage parlor, where she earns extra money by providing a bit of relief that allows her male customers to leave smiling. As a white-skinned single woman living alone in a seedy neighborhood, Ruth tends to stand out. One man refers to her as “sort of like Bugs Bunny meets Julia Roberts,” while a thuggish drug addict (Prashant Prakash) appoints himself as her boyfriend, a designation she repeatedly rejects. Occasionally, Ruth makes an effort to find her long-lost father, but mostly she seems to be stalled in a miserable existence. That Girl in Yellow Boots offers a powerful character study of a woman lost—neither able to blend into her Mumbai surroundings nor recover from the void of her father's absence. The film benefits from uncommonly strong performances by Koechlin, whose Ruth is an eerily enigmatic figure, and Prakash as her part-comic/part-harrowing would-be lover. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)