An amazingly stylish film, which makes it hard to comment about. So much hardwork and thought has gone into everything, that it would be brash to be critical when one is still in the learning stages of the craft.
So, instead I want to get into what could have made the film better, more from the script point of view.
1. Not start with Amy's haunting memory of her mother. Instead, made her more on the edge by starting with her sinister drawings, her teacher finds it, is horrified, and her dad is called. Or start with her turn up for the wedding in her mother's clothes. Her father yells at her. Conversation overhead by KC. He walks over to her and they talk.
Cut to his smoking up and she looking on, fascinated. Tries it and in that dope haze describes her mother to him. Then, in silence, sees her mother enter the tub of water by herself. And she gasps back to reality.
--- the main point I want to make is that the fact that her mother tried to kill Amy must be saved for the very last ---
2. The finding her driver tied up by KC and co, stretched things. Instead have the note left on the windshield. She reads it, turns and has water thrown on her. They speed away, throwing a gang of students in array. The students curse them. Amy is impressed and feels an instant connect with their 'outsider' behaviour.
3. Not show Tanya's modeling shot at all. It takes away from her non-glamourous life. Her bulimia should have been repeated one more time.
4. The holi day - Tanya shouldn't have started with 'Hollywood, how many men have you slept with'. Instead, have Amy feel a little left out till she does the spin of the bottle.
The KC speech of the whole trust thing had to go.
And definitely shown her try cocain for the first time. Maybe right after she's had a disturbing recollection of her mother. Or better still when she has cocain she realises she can 'see' her mother better. The memory becomes more real.
5. Inspector Mathur's marriage track served no purpose. The only benefit being the divorce filing scene, which in any case is not how it happens. Not anymore, anyway.
Actually here I must stop because after this the story committed suicide with the running-over episode. After watching the film, you realise that the crux was film was the gang executing a crazy plan, then finding themselves on the run, and then turning against each other.
I didn't get why everyone else except KC felt involved in the accident in the first place. It wasn't their fault. Why would a girl like Tanya or a geek like Zubin say yes to the kidnapping plan? The initial mess they get into is so severe that nothing else kept up with it after that. The knocking down of Tanya and KC's death went into crazy land. Which is why, I think, the attempted rape and subsequent murder of the rapist seem to was written - the group need to be involved in one BIG goof up TOGETHER.
So if the initial mess was that in a cocaine-induced fervor they take the car away from KC as a joke and crash it up, you have a situation where everyone is involved. If it was Amy's idea to be take the car away, it makes sense that she say the kidnap her as a way to get the money. And here you have the advantage of keeping it light initially. So Somo's flashback in a flashback, the burkha's, Amy's sizzling sexuality can all be explored. And there's be no need to switch genres so strangely.
Continuing:
6. KC's jealously rages were silly. Breaking a bottle against a man's face because he speaks to his girl and then to treat her like he doesn't actually give a fuck are so, so weird.
7. If the running over had happened while they were on a run, nothing like it.
8. Amy's manipulation just didn't come across. It was important for us to see her talent in having people around her little finger because in the end we need to fear her as much as we feel sorry for her.
Well, so much for now. Have a ton of other things to write... so maybe I'll return and edit this later.
