Filhaal

The best thing are the names—Tabu and Sushmita as Rewa and Siya, two friends readyto do anything for each other. They fail, however, in keeping the interest alive in thismuch-awaited movie. But any pretensions that Meghna Gulzar carries forward the Gulzartradition are dispelled in the first half hour of the movie itself. To begin with, thereis little by way of screenplay. Meghna, it seems, had an idea which she forgot to evolveinto a script. So she does the next best thing—play around with moments and emotionsin the hope that the audience will connect somewhere with a super-clean, super-sanitisedversion of Doosri Dulhan. But her personalised interpretation of the 'womancarrying someone else's baby' story rings a false bell. The upper-class settingis devoid of any reality touch—houses are full of blues and yellows while humanbeings wear white and matching colour shades. They are too perfect to be true. Theiremotions touch a high which borders on the absurd—Sushmita, the one doing thesacrifice, switches from an independent person, who doesn't want a child, to anemotionally-charged potential mother in an instant. Tabu, the mourning mother who cannotconceive, first appears indebted to her friend. Then, suddenly, she contracts thejealousy/insecurity syndrome and leaves her house. The men are either pansies or tooengrossed in the womanly play to emerge as independent characters. But the worse partconcerns the director's total surrender to a dead pace. The second half laboursendlessly on trite sentimental problems—there is not even an attempt to try out a newtwist.

Tabu has gone through these emotions before. It is Sushmita who tries treading on newground—her forte however remains the three or four expressions she is capable of. AnuMalik's music takes an uncalled for 'arty' tangent.