With Madhur Bhandarkar's "Page 3", which portrays the fickleness and hypocrisy of the world of glamour and showbiz, Bollywood seems to have come of age.

Coming 45 years after Guru Dutt's "Kaagaz Ke Phool" (1959), in which the talented director dared to venture into taboo territory by making a film about the working of the film industry, "Page 3" is Bhandarkar's own provocative take on the Hindi film business.

Guru Dutt's semi-autobiographical "Kaagaz Ke Phool" was about sensitive director Suresh Sinha (Guru Dutt) who falls in love with his protégée Shanti (Waheeda Rehman) and finally loses her and his career to the fickleness of filmdom.

Outwardly, "Page 3" moves as far away as possible from Guru Dutt's dirge-like drama of disenchantment. But look closely and this is the same territory of heaving heartbreaks described by Guru Dutt.

In "Page 3", the lyricism of "Kaagaz Ke Phool" is peeled away. Instead we see only the emptiness and hypocrisy of the beautiful people.

The characters in Bhandarkar's film are immediately and easily recognisable. The wide-eyed wannabe from Delhi (Tara Sharma) who soon discovers stardom comes with a price tag when a "respectable" producer asks his assistant, "Degi kya? (Will she oblige?)"

Or, the seemingly sober handsome he-man hero (Bikram Saluja) who lectures the media on AIDS awareness and then quietly tells his actress girlfriend to abort their baby. It's all so real, you can touch these people with your bare hands.

The shock of watching Bollywood's pants being peeled off is immense. This isn't the Bollywood that we want to know.

From Dharmendra in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's "Guddi" in 1971, to Jackie Shroff in Ram Gopal Varma's "Rangeela", to Akshay Kumar in Dharmesh Darshan's "Haan...Maine Bhi Pyar Kiya", they've all played the iconic superstar going out of their way to be accommodating and generous towards fans.

Even a man as pragmatic as Ram Gopal Varma made "Masti" in which a new-age heroine, ominously called Mallika, hides in her ardent fan's home to get away from her avaricious gold-digging relatives - the kind who crawled out of the woodwork after Parveen Babi's death.

Ironically, "Page 3" was released a day before Parveen's tragic death.

Bhandarkar's film spares us no details in demystifying Bollywood. From aspiring actors who sleep with gay dress designers to producers who sleep without their conscience, every stereotype comes up for scrutiny.

The hero in the film, played by Bikram Saluja, peels away the varnish to reveal the duplicity of the iconic figure. Is this the true face of Bollywood?

"I can't comment on everyone. But yes, girls are exploited, no doubt about it," says Saluja.

"But I would say it's a two-way thing. Only those girls who want to get exploited end up on the wrong side of their bed. No one forces a wannabe, male or female, to sleep with him."

Ironically, Bhandarkar himself went through a gruelling casting-couch scandal while making the film. Did his personal trauma regarding charges of sexual exploitation add sheen of bitterness to his Bollywood characters in "Page 3"?

"I really don't think the real had any bearing on the reel, except for the fact that the suffering made me more sensitive as a director. I understand what levels of compromise an artiste has to go through for survival," says Bhandarkar.

"My previous film ('Aan: Men At Work') is proof of that. I don't want to portray the film world as a den of vice. But everything is for sale out here. And the price tags are getting higher every Friday," says Bhandarkar.

There are more films demolishing the image of the Bollywood icon on the way.

In Tanuja Chandra's "Film Star", Mahima Chowdhary is a film actress who "steals" a woman's life for a role and refuses to repay the debt. In Rituparno Ghosh's proposed Hindi film, Amitabh Bachchan will play a famous filmmaker whose domestic life is in a shambles.

And in a film version of the Madhur Bhandakar-Preeti Jain scandal, Sameer Dharamadhikari plays the director.

"Yes, the real-life scandal is the USP of our film," Dharamadhikari says proudly. This is the same actor whom Bhandarkar had launched opposite Raveena Tandon in "Satta".