Yuvvraaj finds him totally bereft of new ideas. The self-styled showman falls back on the baroque sets, grandiose story-telling, and swelling orchestral music that used to work for him back in the 80s’, and gives us Taal all over again, without any of its soaring qualities.
In just under three painful hours, three estranged brothers, Salman, Anil and Zayed, discover each other. Salman, starting off being rude to ladylove Katrina, admits to having a soft corner for her. Zayed, who only wants his share of the property, is suddenly and unconvincingly overwhelmed by brotherly love. Dim-witted eldest sibling Anil Kapoor, who’s been left all the lovely lolly, overcomes death-by-poisoning. The dastardly villains, who include a vamp dressed in plunging spaghetti cholis and poisonous smiles, are vanquished. And they all live happily afterward.
To prove to his audiences that he is very up to the minute, Ghai makes his heroine a gown-wearing cellist. Katrina lives in Prague in a mansion that looks like a museum. Boman Irani, who’s turning into the new Anupam Kher with all the heavy father roles he seems to be playing, rejoices in calling his future-son-law “donkey, monkey, flunkey”. Salman smiles when he hears this, shakes his ear-rings (he wears large hoops in both ears), and changes his hair-style and colour every couple of reels.
Anil Kapoor is made to smile daftly, and spend all his time with a little boy: we hear the term ‘paagal’ only a handful of times. Ghai makes up for that by getting a doctor to pronounce that Anil has a ‘genius disorder’. When Anil is not playing with balloons, he is singing classical ‘ragas’.
Time for Ghai to put a pause to his empty directorial flourishes. And stick to producing films.
shubhra.gupta@gmail.com
La Graine et Le Mulet
(The Secret of the Grain)
CAST: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Bouraouia Marzouk;
DIRECTOR: Abdel Kechiche
From the staple of a diet to the staple of a character, a “grain” signifies many things. In this multiple-award-winning film, writer-director Abdel Kechiche utilises the first to explore the second.
A North African delicacy imported to many parts of the world, couscous, rests at the centre of this story of an immigrant still trying to find his feet in a port in France 35 years after he arrived.
For Souad (Marzouk), who is estranged from husband Slimane Beji (Boufares), the dish is more than just pasta, sauce, vegetables and fish. It’s a labour of love, and it lights up the lunches the extended family shares in a crowded kitchen on Sunday afternoons.
Slimane no longer finds a place at the table, though Souad makes it a point to send some couscous across to the hotel where he rents a room. She as well as their children know that Slimane has found love and a new family there in the hotel-owner and her sultry daughter Rym (Herzi), but that doesn’t come in the way of the dish. Slimane eats it with relish, sharing it with Rym. She is angry at how Slimane’s family treats her mother and her, but she can never say no to couscous.
Sixty-one and barely able to meet his bills, Slimane is one day told he is too slow for the work demanded of him at the dockyard. Dejected, he gets thinking about what he has achieved since leaving his home country and what he is leaving behind for his estranged wife and children.
He sees a boat up for dismantling, and in the flush of losing his job and the warm remembrance of his wife’s cooking, decides to open a boat restaurant serving fish couscous. He has little going for him except his two families, and as he battles against odds — from money to authorisations of endless kinds — he decides to open the restaurant if only for a night. In the run-up to the renovation of the boat and the opening night, The Secret of The Grain separates the wheat from the chaff.
Kechiche knows his subject and the film reflects the warmth and understanding with which he views it, though it is inordinately long at 2 hrs and 30 minutes. We understand Slimane’s need to do what he decides to do, as of the various characters.
The two cultures in the film collide without clashing, showing that there’s little to separate them except perhaps the distance that nobody crosses. When they do come together, they discover there are some things that aren’t a secret to the grain— everyone likes good music, and a well-done couscous.
MIRRORS
CAST: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton;
DIRECTOR: Alexandre Aja
Always thought there was an evil design behind all those giant mirrors at clothes stores. After all, how many have escaped their magic, whether one thought the view was extremely flattering or deceptively bad?
But how evil are they? Put Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) behind the camera, and what do you think?
In Mirrors, they exist as monstrous things which subsume practically everything bad going around them, are indestructible and insurmountable. They start off from a luxury department store that catches fire, and get at you practically everywhere, from your bathroom mirror to water flowing off a bathtub, to your reflection in your doorknob. And they get at you practically any which way — from getting you to slash your throat with a piece of a mirror, to having you pull your face apart. All captured in graphic detail.
It takes a Kiefer Sutherland — who else? — to find a way around them, almost. The message being that the Mirrors can return, and going by Sutherland’s record, they probably will.
The question is nice: every time you look into the mirror, is it you looking at yourself, or the mirror looking back at you? The answer ain’t: it’ll probably be Aja wielding the camera again.
shalini.langer@expressindia.com