Sold movie review & film summary (2016)

Indian actress Niyar Saikia (14 years old during filming) plays Lakshmi with fearless candor and warmth. We are already fearful for her as she boards a train, then a bus, and literally crosses the bridge into a large and dangerous world, the streets and people crowding in on her. Then she arrives at Happiness House in Kolkata, India—a brothel. Shot on location in Nepal and India, the film gives us a vibrant, tangible sense of place, the color and dust of a crowded ancient city, and the layers of secrecy and corruption under which Lakshmi and those like her are trapped. 

The film does an excellent job of letting us inside Lakshmi's physical and emotional experience. We are with her step by step, as the creeping awareness of what she does not know begins to dawn on her; we can be one step ahead, but barely. As she struggles to trust and please those she encounters, Lakshmi senses that something is wrong, especially upon meeting Mumtaz (Sushmita Mukherjee), a sinister surrogate for the kindly mother she left behind, who has armed her with the wisdom that will be both her undoing and her salvation: "All happiness comes from thinking of others, misery from thinking of yourself." 

Lakshmi is mentally and physically ripe in every way for her predators, and we understand it. The next scenes are almost unbearable to watch but must be seen to be believed—and dare I say, witnessed—on behalf of those who experience these atrocities daily all over the world. Lakshmi is imprisoned, beaten, drugged, and repeatedly raped, until she acquiesces. Resisting, running away, or compromising the secrecy of the brothel results in grotesque brutalization. 

Amazingly, theses scenes are rendered graphically enough to convey the horror of what happens, but don't violate the character's or the actress's dignity. Lakshmi's intelligence and spirit help her survive and forge relationships with the other women in the house, many of whom have been there for years, trying to pay off the bogus "debts" that Mumtaz extracts. We begin to learn bits and pieces from their stories, and they are sketched vividly enough to give the film believable texture and a wider lens on this kind of enslavement.