Movie Review: RED

Stars: Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora, Sushant Singh

Review: She’s a widow, though not the weeping kind. He needs a change of heart, though not in the way you would expect him to.

Aftab Shivdasani, muscles pumped up to the gills, tattoo on forearm and scowl in place, plays a man so out of touch with reality he actually thinks he could woo and bed the widow of the man whose heart has been transplanted into his body.

This is Vikram Bhatt’s rather startling attempt at a noire thriller. Can’t say why it’s called Red unless you’re looking at a man who sees red every time the slinky widow passes by. He grabs her. They cuddle and kiss as the camera caresses the contours of their heaving body in search of erogenous convictions.

Bhatt gets a chance to look into lives that are as star- crossed as they are unable to control their primeval urges. True to its noire genre Red is shot mostly in the rain and in dark interiors lit up with a passion-play that’s largely supported by Himesh Reshammiya’s pounding tracks.

The first - half of this blessedly brief movie moves at a fairly frisky pace. But the nicotined narrative runs out of breath and breadth later on, leaving you looking at a film that’s high on moods but pretty low in terms of credibility.

Sushan Singh as a copy investigating a murder hardly gives the plot the hand-up that he’s expected to. His two buffoon-like deputies seem straight out of Doordarshan detective thriller.

Bhatt aims for a bizarre kind of eroticism where the characters cease to be people and are instead projected as emblems of greed, lust, melancholy and dark machinations that send them swirling into damnation.

There’s just a scattering of characters supporting the lovers at the centre who play a game of hearts and heartlessness with a ruthless ruggedness that makes them as prone to selfdestruction as it makes them impervious to conventional relationships and behaviour.

Tragically the actors fail to rise to the call of the heart’s thundering fall. Aftav Shivdasani takes the fall the hardest. The film is almost a showcase for him to display his variety of emotions. Shivdasani goes through the motions from A to B with nothing more to see.

Celina Jaitley as the fidgety femme fatale seems like a shriller more hyper version of Esha Deol in Bhatt’s last film Ankahee. Poor Amrita Arora is allowed no space in the narrative forever in search of pace and grace. But the slippery world of lust and treachery lets the characters and finally the film down.

What you see is certainly not what you get in this thriller about two people who deserve each other.

We deserve a lot better.

Lisa Ray And Sheetal Seth As Lesbians

It looks like alternate sexuality is here to stay. After a spate of coming-out-of-closet films like Brokeback Mountain and Kinsey, it’s author Shamim Sharif’s turn.

It’s a film based on her own autobiographical book. Shamim has just finished shooting I Can’t Think Straight in London. In this autographical story Lisa Ray and US-born Sheetal Sheth play lovers.

The film has been shot entirely in London and Oxford.

Interestingly Ray who plays the rather unconventional role in Shamim’s film, has just beeen seen wowing the world and its poor cousin India in Deepa Mehta’s irradiant Water.

Though Deepa is tight-lipped about her protégée foray into another kind of cinema the director does wonder what Lisa (who was chosen for Water after going through a short list that included Tabu and Kareena Kapoor) is up to.

“I’ve no idea what Lisa is doing with her career,” says Deepa. “I know she’s very very much in demand after Water. Beyond that I’ve no comment to make on her career.”

Lisa who started her career in Bollywood with Vikram Bhatt’s Kasoor strangely, chooses not to talk about her lesbian project.

Aseem Bajaj (who shot Pritish Nandy Communications’ Chameli) served as the DOP in the film.

In a replication of TV star Iqbal Khan’s visa blues Aseem says, “It was touch and go when some of the crew from India were denied visas. I had to go alone and get my assistants from London. But once there it was smooth-sailing all the way.

We were supposed to take nearly forty days to shoot. But we completed in just thirty-two days. I won’t say the film is going to be controversial. Not in this day and age, Shamim has handled the theme with great delicacy.”

Aseem returns to London to shoot Shamim Sharif’s next film called The Reader, a scandalous yet tender love story just after World War 2 about a blind teacher in Oxford and her student.

Movie Review: So How Exactly Is Nishabd?

A film that attempts to break new ground in terms of subject and storytelling should be applauded. And in that sphere, Nishabd doesn’t hold back. Yes, it does try to soften the blow to an over-protected audience used to tamer stuff, but the blow is still there.

Domesticated 60-year-old photographer Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) has a teenaged daughter Ritu (Shraddha Arya) and a wife of 27 years (Revathi), with whom he describes his life as having “no complaints”.

Enter his daughter’s friend Jiah (Jiah Khan) who comes to their home to spend the holidays. She’s everything he’s not – young, free, irreverent and brash. An attraction develops, fuelled by Jiah’s playful flirtations with him. They confess their love to each other and the story takes it from there.

Before seeing the film, one wondered what would happen — would the film see their attraction find a conclusion, or would it be a safe touch-and-go romance, like in Dil Chahta Hai? The answer is, it does both. While the film boldly explores their guilty relationship, it also has the most hurried and unexplained endings, that leaves you feeling cheated.

This is one mistake that several filmmakers who touch upon unconventional topics commit – they dare and then they duck. Like in DCH, where the older woman- younger man relationship was conveniently taken care of by the abrupt and unconvincing death of Dimple Kapadia’s character. Here too, the film takes a stand, but then shifts.

The interludes where Bachchan’s Vijay directly addresses the audience and “explains” how and why the relationship happened are truly unnecessary, and pull down the pace of the film. Is it really necessary to spoon-feed the audience with preachy clarifications?

Predictably, the film rest on Bachchan’s able shoulders, as he emotes with all sincerity and brings forth the nuances of his complicated situation. He’s especially delightful in a scene where he breaks into an uncontrollable, spontaneous laughing fit recollecting Jiah’s antics, as his worried wife looks on, and he can’t tell her why.

Jiah Khan, perfectly cast, ably supports him. She’s a delight to watch in her effortless rendering of the straight-talking girl who loves making everyone just a bit uncomfortable.

One sore point – Jiah is shown to have divorced parents, hence the insinuation that she’s from a broken family…therefore a bit unstable…therefore susceptible to such a romance, is an unacceptable cliché, and very disappointing.

On the opposite spectrum is Vijay’s wife, another cliché – a sacrificing, plain, devoid of any sexuality, saas-bahu serials-watching, strict housewife who does ‘kit kit’. What’s also putting off is the unnecessary and too-much emphasis on Jiah’s sexuality.

Apart from provocatively licking a lollipop, her legs miraculously find their way into the frame of almost every shot. Then of course there’s the garden hose pipe scene where she’s in the garden, drenched and playing with the water pipe (who does that?) as Vijay rushes to click her pictures.

The cinematography (Amit Roy) is noteworthy and the camera effortlessly glides and ponders over the protagonists’ lives. Costumes are stylized, and Jiah’s look with her noisy junk jewellery and Bachchan in his dapper jumpers and jackets are a treat to watch.

One can admire a film for breaking convention but there are other factors that come into play when one must decide whether to recommend or not recommend a film — how convincing is it, how absorbing, how moving?

Nishabd, though partly all three, is never fully any one. And part emotions simply don’t work in a cinema hall. Watch the film, without expectations, if you are a severe Bachchan fan and like to sample variety in your films. Else, rent out the far more complex and intriguing Lolita instead.

John Abraham Finally Gets A Haircut

He’s finally done it. Apart from making it to the red carpet at the 2007 Academy Awards, Water star John Abraham also snipped off his trademark long tresses for a shorter crop courtesy ace stylist Sapna Bhavnani.

Says Sapna, “I’ve been coaxing John into cutting his hair for the last two months. This is the look he will be sporting for Goal, where he plays a football player.

He wanted to keep his long hair for the role, but I kept telling him it wouldn’t look nice. Finally, he relented!”

John’s good friend and designer Rocky S also chipped in with tips on his new look. “He cut his hair a few days before he left for Los Angeles for the Oscars.

He didn’t want people to discover his new look, so he always wore a cap in public. He wanted to unveil his new look on the Oscar red carpet, and I’m glad the entire world has got a glimpse of it now,” she says.

Interestingly, Bipasha wasn’t in town when John got his hair cropped. “She was in for a total surprise.

She hadn’t seen the new look until I showed her John’s pictures. I had taken a couple of snaps of John during the cutting process and showed them to Bipasha. She loved the look.”

When asked if it was an emotional moment for John to let go of his hair, she says, “Not really! He was very chilled out about the entire exercise.

In fact, now all these John Abraham wannabes who grew their hair long will be rushing to parlours to chop them off! There can only be one John Abraham, so it’s sad when people try to ape his style.”

Rocky S, who is in Paris at the moment, tells us about the black achkan he designed for John. “It’s a traditional achkan with a Western touch.

I think John carried it off really well on the red carpet,” he says. John left for London after the Oscar’s bash to join the cast and crew of Goal.