Indian cinema rides the Slumdog wave

The impact of Slumdog Millionaire has percolated through Indian cinema and a grittier genre is emerging taking a more direct look at the country and its inequalities. Sudhir Mishra's Ride the Wave Johnny, is an intimate look at Mumbai, connecting the dots between the dirt-poor pavement dwellers, the gangsters, police, media players and business people to give a sense of the vast interconnectedness of this sprawling mega-city.

Mumbai, as ever, looks astonishing on the big screen. Its teeming ocean-side immensity has the potential to replace New York as the globalised world's iconic cityscape. The sharp contrasts of ultramodern skyscrapers, minarets and crumbling colonial-era architecture gives each shot of Mumbai a unique human resonance, every face in a window, every stain on a stairwell, redolent of human drama. And Mishra's Dogma-style hand-held camera work gives the film an organic quality, capturing the natural light and shade of the city, its raw colours and infinite textures.

The plot has many interesting points – too many, unfortunately. There are several storylines that have the potential to be films in their own right, but none of these are told in sufficient depth; instead the film skims across a range of narratives that range from being poignant and powerful to downright absurd.

The Johnny of the movie is a coffee-boy who also delivers cocaine for his gangster boss, Chutta, while nursing dreams of escaping to Dubai (a perennial fantasy of poor Indians who have no idea of the exploitation that awaits them). Having seen his parents murdered in his rural village, he eeks out a living in the big city under the wing of Chutta's lover, an obese Muslim transvestite. Johnny is played by Sikander Agarwal, a poor kid from Bihar who made his way to Calcutta, where he was "discovered" by a German director on his first day in the city. "I had never acted in films, I was without work, I agreed," he says of his experience. "The film got over, the German crew went back to their country and I went back to my struggle to survive," With his unique life story, Aggarwal brings to his character an authenticity most of the other actors rarely match.

Johnny's tale is interwoven with a moving love triangle involving a corrupt policeman, Chiple, his beautiful younger wife, Divya, and her young lover, Parvez. Johnny helps Parvez break into a safe house Chiple uses for whoring and stashing the proceeds of his bent activities, which include assassinating local businessmen. The emotional intensity between the three of them is the most compelling thing in the movie. Kay Kay Menon is excellent as the demonic policeman who, despite his crimes and casual cruelties, is still deeply in love with his wife. But like everything good in this movie, this story is diluted as Mishra forays into other areas.

The tale of a model, Preeti, and her relationship with her coke-head advertising executive boyfriend, Vishal, is merely tedious. The combination of models, cocaine and advertising ceased to be interesting everywhere else in the world in the 1980s, but Mishra shoehorns this story into the movie as a glib account of India's rapid modernisation. Their tale segues into a completely bizarre subplot, involving a mysterious crime boss, who acts as Preeti's fairy Godfather, becoming obsessed after seeing her on TV.

The film has many Bollywood flaws. It's far too overlong, and the sexual dynamics are stunted by Indian sensibilities. While foul language is spewed freely to bring an earthy feel to the movie, kissing remains taboo. Thus impassioned lovers find themselves locked in weird, sexless cuddles. One particularly amusing scene involves the sight of Preeti appearing to climax, fully-clothed, half falling out of a car window while sitting on Parvez's lap, while he looks like he's taking a snooze. If depictions of sex are going to be as ridiculous as this in Indian cinema, it's better that film-makers leave them out altogether.

This movie doesn't have the energy of Slumdog Millionaire, nor does it have its deep concern with India's poor. Johnny's tale is a constant foil to other people's stories rather than the main event. But the film is evidence that Indian film-makers are mining the streets for stories rather than repeating the same middle-class Bollywood cliches. By no means a masterpiece, it is a sign of much better things to come.