The Courtesans of Bombay

Intriguing, colorful, and revealing, The Courtesans of Bombay is Merchant Ivory’s docudrama about Pavan Pool, the enclosed area where the city’s singing and dancing courtesans ply their trade. It’s a portrait of a unique location both exotic and tawdry: crammed tenements housing thousands of men playing up to the camera as they seek out forbidden pleasures—and the courtesans themselves, who appear more as entertainers than sex workers. It shows how young girls are groomed in the arts of singing, dancing and, by inference, seduction. Neither sensationalist nor prurient, the film is about a tradition with a special place in Indian society: the entertainment of paying customers—always men—by songstresses and dancers who perform in the classic Hindustani styles of the ancient “nautch” girls, India’s version of the Japanese geisha.