As people have rolled their eyes at my love of Shah Rukh, so they have been horrified at my admiration of Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Belief that the aesthetic of realism signals enlightenment and rationality, that the discussion of power is a higher political truth than discussions of desire, feels distaste for their emotionally over-saturated, pleasure first conceptualisation, politically indisciplined queerness, and the unseemly passion that demands sincerity.

The sublime first hour of Gangubai Kathiawadi smiled into my shining eyes and held me tight. Bhansali’s maximalism had cooked itself into something rich but mellow like ragu sauce. Though indicating the 1950s, its iconography and narrative energy are rooted in an older time, a younger Bombay and the libidinal energy which birthed the city: the bazaar. Sex, cinema, business nestle cheek-by-jowl, mohallas and professions seeping into each other’s shades of grey. Sepia frames are designed like old film magazine photos, invoking actresses of the 1930s and ’40s, hair frizzy, crimped, double-plaited, gleaming darker skin tones, potent, sultry glamour. The frontal frames use mirrors in ways playful, sensual, emotive and conceptual by turns and allude, with a delicious, dense economy, to cinema’s courtesanal and theatrical roots. In a gorgeous scene, one woman’s letter to her father is built of lines uttered by many members of the brothel, for each has a similar seam of pain. I laughed aloud when Seema Pahwa’s bleach-covered face is reflected in a mirror held up by an assistant, becoming his face. Popular cinema has given refuge to much not considered respectable and acceptable by society, making it beautiful through the figure of the star; the cinema idol rules the spirit religion of our rejected parts. This is also the film’s strength. Alia Bhatt is breathtaking—gathering into her body pain, loneliness, ambition and smarts, the burning heart of Gangu and many sex workers, such that it possesses our souls forever. In Ajay Devgn’s presence, the star’s heat and light floods the frame and fills our senses, cinematic intimacy that helps us embrace and empathise with the forbidden.