A porn star reveals more than she realizes in Mostly Sunny

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      A documentary by Dilip Mehta. Rated 18A.

      Partly Sunny might be a better title for this well-made but ultimately frustrating documentary, as its main subject is so compartmentalized as to be almost unknown to herself.

      Currently going by the nom de porn of Sunny Leone, Karenjit Kaur Vohra was born 35 years ago in Sarnia, Ontario. When her family moved to Orange County, California, the teenage Karenjit stumbled into the adult-entertainment industry, going from Penthouse Pet to hard-core porn.

      After meeting her husband, New York businessman and eventual costar Daniel Weber, she started her own AE company and became determined to move from one kind of screen to another.

      Directed by veteran cameraman and producer Dilip Mehta, and written by him with his better-known sister Deepa, the 82-minute effort concentrates on the bountiful performer’s attempt to transition into a bona fide Bollywood star.

      Mehta takes us to India, where we’re repeatedly reminded that Sunny is the most-Googled celebrity on that massive subcontinent. A local journalist ponders how the home of the Kama Sutra could have embraced Victorian prudery in its colonial days.

      The result, one could say, finds this versatile Indo-Canadian starring in Jism 2, a soft-core musical with zero kissing allowed. The spunky star, who speaks little Hindi, is seen in Mumbai and then on a more ancient set in Rajasthan, and she’s consistently flabbergasted by her own success.

      The problem with the film, which is otherwise entertainingly fluid in location and tone, is that its pretty protagonist speaks only in giggling clichés, revealing little, if any, awareness of the forces that led to her current status and future. Mostly, the talk is of money.

      But much time is also spent on family issues, starting with the odd fact that she took her sex-industry name from her brother, Sunny, who himself blandly recalls selling Sis’s seminude photos off his dorm-room wall.

      Their parents, by the way, died tragically young, but this isn’t cause for much soul-searching either. Because where’s the payoff in that?

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