Gloriously audacious in its presentation of Indian women in all their complexity and sexuality, Alankrita Shrivastava’s high-spirited—and sometimes hilarious—second feature tracks its four heroines as they seek liberation from oppressive gender codes.
A young mother and secret saleswoman; a college student hiding her partying from her parents; a beautician who enjoys a healthy sex life with her boyfriend yet is condemned to a limpid arranged marriage; an older woman whose addiction to erotic fiction threatens to spill over into real life: the ladies in Lipstick Under My Burkha are each of them bursting with ideas and appetites that no social order can crush.