Film: "Barkhaa"; Cast: Sara Loren, Taha Shah, Puneet Issar, Priyanshu Chatterjee; Director: Shadaab Mirza; Rating: ***
Pakeezah goes to the beer bar. Or some such tagline would serve this fairly watchable melodrama's purposes.
Melodrama
as a genre in Indian cinema has gone out of vogue. Debutant director
Shadaab Mirza weaves an emotional yarn about a girl's journey from the
pristine Himachal hinterland into a beer bar run by an incredibly benign
South Indian man who could be one of those caring madams in the films
about fallen women set in kothas.
To his credit, the director
doesn't over-romanticise the bar girl Barkhaa's tumultuous life story,
at least not initially when she is shown to be quite a tease.
The
scenes showing the rich pampered lawyer's besotted son Jatin (Taha
Shah, stiff and not just in the upper-lip) frequenting the bar to dart
lovelorn looks at his object of adoration are met with a disarming mix
of amusement and annoyance by Barkhaa.
The scenes featuring the
mismatched couple's tragic game of seduction in the bar are effective in
putting across a sense of incredulity about the cruel jokes played by
destiny specially in movies about... well, the cruel jokes played by
destiny.
A large part of the film's effectiveness depends on lead
actress Sara Loren, who is emotively motivated, understands the camera
and the power of heightened emotions expressed on screen, and is
powerfully empowered to convey a wealth of emotions through her eyes and
voice.
But the film's finest performances comes from Ashiesh Roy
as the level headed unbelievably kind bar owner. Roy imparts a natural
ease to his over-sweetened part in a film where everybody strains to
make an impact.
Regrettably, Loren's strong performance is
saddled with bizarre coincidences and unconvincing twists and turns in
the narration which plot to diminish her screen presence.
The
story tends to veer dangerously close to the theatrical, specially after
mid-point when the proceedings begin to veer absurdly close to the
outrageous.
Yet, there is a semblance of sincerity in the way the life of bar dancer is humanised without making her look angelic.
The film refuses to glamorise and caricaturise the bar dancer the way Farah Khan did in "Happy New Year".
At the same time, the narrative won't tolerate a bar dancer being dubbed a prostitute.
There's
a moment of terrific awakening where Ashiesh Roy's bar owner's
character lashes out at someone who tries to buy the heroine's sexual
favours for a night.
Eventually Barkhaa's world begins to fall apart. The same, unfortunately is true of the film.
But
in taking the life of a tawaif from out of the ornate kotha into the
harsh glare of the beer bar, "Barkhaa" succeeds in portraying a
cinematic journey worth undertaking.
There is also a reformist
zeal in the script that B.R. Chopra would have approved of in the way
the film's hero insists on marrying a bar girl who is a mother of a
little girl.
If only real life had such solutions to offer distressed women and victims of social hypocrisy.
"Barkhaa"
rains down a rhapsody of drama and romance. A heart-warming at times,
touching tale of an innocent girl's journey into the world of deceit,
compromise and corruption, it echoes Raj Kapoor's "Ram Teri Ganga Maili"
and Kamal Amrohi's "Pakeezah" in the way the respectable genteel upper
class is shown to exploit women of meagre means.
Sara Loren is no Meena Kumari. But she kills the part much better than Mandakini in Raj Kapoor's fevered fable.
Breasts are left behind. This Ganga is not maili. Just maligned.
