Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots is a twisted tale served with such incredible subtlety, skill and cunning that long after it is over, it follows you. Impressive faces and stunning scenes linger, and Kalki Koechlin’s hands keep moving, bothering.

TGIYB is a film for adults because it’s not easy to watch. Though its main story is seemingly simple and has an instant emotional connect, the writers (Kashyap and Kalki) plonk a deeply disturbing fact between the film’s lead and us that can’t be wished away.
Ruth (Kalki), a British citizen, is living in Mumbai. Her tourist visa has expired but she needs to stay on, to find her father — Arjun Patel. At the passport office, standing in queues, talking to clerks, we figure that she has been living in India for a while, speaks Hindi and has learnt to bribe. She is not allowed to work on her tourist visa, but we know that she gets by on Swedish and Thai massage.
Ruth works at AspaSpa, a run-down, dingy massage parlour guarded by manager-receptionist Maya (Puja Sarup), one of the film’s two absolutely riveting supporting characters. The other is Chittiyappa Gowda (Gulshan Devaiah), but we’ll come to him later.
Ruth has created a quiet life for herself in Mumbai. She has a small, scruffy home, a boyfriend, a job and a secret. We are let in on this at her very first massage appointment. She bolts the door, washes her hands, and while massaging the client, casually asks, “Handshake? Handjob?” It’ll cost the man Rs 1,000. He nods and she grabs a bottle of Durex lubricant. We stand with our back to the wall, next to the camera, staring at her face, our moral compass spinning.
The idea is erotic, dirty, but what we see on the screen is a cold act that needs to be done, Rs 1,000 a piece. Ruth’s straight, almost bored gaze at the wall in front keeps her and us at a safe distance from what she is doing. She doesn’t look or react, so we don’t need to either.
Ruth’s main concern is finding her father. She seeks the help of a British high commission employee, to check passport records; befriends a girl at the Osho Ashram in Pune where her father may or may not be living; goes to cops, post offices. Men comment on her mouth, ask for a handjob, demand money.
Ruth’s boyfriend Prashant (Prashant Prakash), a drug addict, wants to gift her stuff but wants intimacy and sex in return. Ruth can't have sex, so she offers a handjob. He lies down, closes his eyes and tells her to stop talking.
We sort of figure what Prashant does when Chittiyappa Gowda, a gun-wielding psycho, comes to Ruth’s house looking for Prashant. But Chittiyappa, a Kannada film buff, is here essentially to make brilliant a scene that’s an obvious reference to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
Later in the film, when Prashant handcuffs himself to the grill of Ruth’s bedroom window to stay away from drugs, goes into withdrawal and at one point shouts at her for being closed and controlling, she breaks down. “My mother wants me to be a saint, you want me to f***, and the world wants happy endings. I want love unconditionally,” Ruth shouts and tells him about her sister Emily’s pregnancy and suicide and her father’s disappearance when she was five.
Clues start to materialise. Her father is in Mumbai, in Versova. Ruth gets his address and rushes to see him. He is not at home, but in his living room Ruth spots a box with her name on top and her pictures inside, recent ones. Then she spots his identity card. Ruth runs out, calls Chittiyappa and asks for a gun.

KALKI KOECHLINis very good for Indian cinema. For one, she seems to have calmed down the frenzied and often swaggering storyteller in Kashyap. But mainly because there are few actresses in Bollywood who would sign up for this role and deliver it with such exacting honesty.
Her innocent and exotic face helps, as does her androgynous figure. But these features only enhance her exquisite acting skills. Kalki comfortably inhabits Ruth with all her loneliness, desire to please and the ability, as well as necessity, to shut out the world.
Kalki is the film’s heartbeat, and Anurag Kashyap doesn’t as much direct her as he examines and observes. Of course he tricks and distracts us, leads us to believe one thing and then stuns us with another. He plays with our heads a bit and I enjoyed that. But he doesn’t over direct.
Fathers and sexual abuse is a recurring theme in Kashyap’s films, but here he goes a step further. The grotesque and shocking truth that is revealed in the end links father and daughter in an unbearable truth. There could have been a guttural howl here, but Kashyap prefers to end it quietly, letting us off to brood in silence.
TGIYB’s screenplay is a multitasking genius. It has a heady mix of feral, bizarre and yet believable characters, all introduced to us in scenes that are master classes in direction and acting. Each character has a fascinating personality, and a story and a heart. Puja Sarup and Gulshan Devaiah shine bright in a very fine ensemble of actors.