“Tell me more, tell me more – was it love at first sight?”

As Julie opens, young and wealthy businessman Mihir Shandaliya reveals on a morning news show that he is in love with a mystery woman and that he intends to marry her. Unfortunately, there is something Mihir does not know about his intended bride – she makes her living as a prostitute.

Confronted by the image of her beloved on national television, Julie faces a hard task. She realizes that she has to tell Mihir about her past, but realizes that even if he accepts her, his high public profile and her history will turn their marriage into one marred by suspicion and secrecy. So Julie decides that the one thing she can do to solve the situation is to come clean – completely and publicly. She marches into offices of the network and demands to speak to the host of the show. Hours later after revealing the sad history of her life, she walks out as the first prostitute in India ever to be invited to speak to a national audience.

“Mr. Bean auditions are down this way, right?”

I have to admit that Julie is the first Bollywood movie that I have ever watched. As such, I can report that for the uninitiated, it is a strange experience indeed. As you watch a serious romantic drama open a flashback to the main character’s young adulthood only to see the movie burst into a brightly-colored musical production number complete with kickline, you realize that you are not only watching a film from the last film industry in the world to believe in the musical as a form – but also from the only film industry in the world to believe that a musical is the proper form for any and every genre.

Musical fans will be disappointed, however. Looking back on the film, I can recall only three musical numbers in the entire two hours and twenty minutes of the movie. One was the aforementioned flashback that strikes early in the movie, the second was a pop dance number in a strip club, and the third is a romantic ballad that comes late in the film. The rest of the movie is a straightforward romantic drama that tells the story of how Julie came from her simple roots in Goa to a job as an interior designer in the big city and then – through treachery and disappointment – became a “professional fancy girl.”

Julie’s boyfriend isn’t the most creative guy….

Cinematically, Julie is a beautiful film. The colors and textures of the movie range from brash, bright comedy to dimly-lit, harsh reality. As Julie’s personal life blossoms – first with aspiring small-town businessman Neel, then by big-time heel Rohan, and finally with über-nice guy Mihir – so does the movie, erupting in scenes of grace and color. Then, as Julie watches her life torn to shreds, the film distorts and twists reality into a funhouse-mirror version of itself.

As Julie, Neha Dhupia avoids the traps and pitfalls that come with playing the typical “hooker with a heart of gold.” Julie never comes off as an innocent trapped in a rough world, nor does she ever appear to be a delicate flower tossed by storm winds. Rather, Neha shows Julie as a woman who wants to take control of her life. A woman who – after a life of constant betrayal by the people nearest to her – decides to make her living off of that betrayal, only to find one more person that she can trust.

Yup. I sense a song coming on.

Julie works because it gives you a character that you can root for. Julie is not harsh, nor is she given to self-pity. She is somebody just trying to make it through the world in one piece. The role is clearly a showcase for Neha Dhupia, former Miss India Universe 2002. There are moments of the movie where she truly shines – she encounters ex-lover Neel in a hotel room where he has just unwittingly bought her services, she explodes in fury at a client who is more interested in sleeping with her than in her designs, and she squirms with discomfort as she sits through an awkward meeting with Mihir’s family – a loving, caring family that can’t wait to accept her into its numbers.

However, as beautiful as the film is and as strong as its leading lady is, Julie suffers a handful of stumbles. The musical numbers – common to Bollywood films of all genres – don’t mesh well with the other scenes and, in the end, serve to break the mood and the flow of the movie. Added to that is the at-times laughably bad English subtitling that forces you to figure out what the translator meant to say and manages to completely garble the meaning of about one line out of every twenty.

In the end, Julie is a beautiful film with wonderful performances – but until the translation is improved, it will be little more than a momentary diversion.