Page 3 (film)

Plot

Madhavi Sharma (Konkona Sen Sharma) is a young journalist, who arrives in Mumbai looking for a job. She is hired by newspaper editor Deepak Suri (Boman Irani), and is assigned the task of reporting on celebrity news, writing articles for Page 3. Her roommate Pearl Sequiera (Sandhya Mridul) is an air hostess who aims to marry a rich man so that she can have a lavish, exciting lifestyle. Gayatri Sachdeva (Tara Sharma), an aspiring actress, later joins them at the apartment. Gayatri becomes romantically involved with a leading actor, Rohit Kumar (Bikram Saluja), and soon finds out that she is pregnant. Rohit is aware that the pregnancy will ruin his career so he tells her to get an abortion. Depressed and shattered, Gayarti unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide and, in the process, loses her child. Meanwhile, Pearl marries a wealthy old man and moves to the United States, where she lives an extravagant but loveless life. Madhavi plans to expose Rohit by writing an article on his relationship with Gayatri, but her editor blocks the story, and she is forced to apologize to Rohit.

Madhavi finds out that her boyfriend is gay, when she finds him in bed with her best friend, Abhijeet (Rehaan Engineer). Soon, Madhavi becomes disillusioned with her job, and she realises that 'the party is over' for her - the celebrity lifestyle is not as glamorous as it seems. She requests to be moved to a different field, and lands on the "crime beat" with Vinayak Mane (Atul Kulkarni). She accompanies Vinayak as they search the city for crime related stories. On one such trip, they witness a bomb blast in the city, which affects Madhavi emotionally. She begins to investigate the story, but is made to cover a high profile Bollywood party by Deepak. At the party, she comes across the ACP in charge of the bomb blast she witnessed, insensitively discussing the incident. Madhavi is shocked to find out that the ACP was attending a film shoot while he was on duty, which delayed his reaction to the blast.

Vinayak goes to cover another news story in Nashik, Madhavi is asked to take charge of crime news. She learns that a number of boys from a rehabilitation home owned by Anjali Thapar have gone missing, and during the subsequent search, a number of boys could not be accounted for. The police find out that a group of boys are being held at the Thapar's private bungalow in Mud Island; but they do not have a search warrant. However, based on Madhavi's investigation, they conduct a raid. It is revealed that Ramesh Thapar has been using children from the rehabilitation home for sexual acts. Ramesh is arrested and police also find a connection to other corporate personalities who are involved in the scandal. Madhavi manages to capture the whole event on camera, and develops a breaking exposé story. She asks Deepak to run the story as the headline article for the next day's news edition, and he promises to look into the piece and put it on the front page. However, that same night Deepak meets with the owner of the newspaper, Mr Agarwal, who is the best friend of Ramesh. Agarwal tells Deepak that the newspaper receives major advertisement revenue and other sponsorship from Ramesh. Fearing major loss to his business, Agarwal declines to publish the story, and asks Deepak to fire Madhavi from the company.

Meanwhile Gayatri, who supposedly turned her back on Bollywood and went back to Delhi, returns to Mumbai. In order to make a name for herself, she sleeps with a film director and gets cast in his next movie. Madhavi, who eventually gets a job as a Page 3 writer for another newspaper, realises that in the elite and extravagant lives of politicians, businessmen, film stars and socialites, there is no place for trust and honour.

Box office

The film was a commercial success. It opened to average opening but with positive word of mouth and raving reviews, it went on to do great business later and emerged a box office hit.

Cast

Awards

The film has won the following awards since its release:

2005 National Film Awards (India)

2005 Zee Cine Awards (India)

Nominations

Death of Amit Ralli

During principal photography, lead actor Amit Ralli died suddenly from jaundice due to hepatitis C. He was 26 at the time. He was replaced by Jai Kalra who made his Bollywood debut with this film.