Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

ONE OF MY most vivid off-screen images of Indian cinema has been the anointing with milk of Tamil film star Kamal Hassan’s larger-than-life wood cutout by his fans outside a Chennai cinema. The scene which appeared like a straight lift from a movie merely confirmed the enormous appeal and importance actors and actresses enjoyed in Bollywood, Kollywood (Chennai), Tollywood (Kolkata) and all the other Woods in India. The star system is here to stay, and it’s almost hurricane growth appears to be demolishing just about everything on its path. The once great studios and film banners, such as Prabhat, New Theatres, RK, Gemini, AVM, Navketan and Guru Dutt among a host of others, may not have exactly perished, but their glory has faded, sometimes beyond recognition. Once, audiences thronged theatres because of a studio or banner: they knew what to expect from an RK or a Gemini. Today, it is no longer so.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the shock and shame story of a night girl.

THERE’s always something not quite right in The Naked Kiss. The acting is a little wooden, camera shots don’t quite match, images pull focus every now and then. In fact, the storyline, like most Fullerian premises, is not quite right either. But this is a typical Fullerian premise – of all us, as individuals and society, aren’t really that quite right either. Apparently this film was cut against Fuller’s wishes by the studio, but despite this, the overall effect is still remarkably unsettling. This film is meant to be “weird”. And as you may see in The Naked Kiss’ companion piece Shock Corridor, Samuel Fuller doesn’t draw moral judgments on what is weird or abnormal. In fact with some of his favourite themes – madness, sexuality, civilization, punishment – you wonder if he was Foucault’s favourite filmmaker.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THE HOTTEST news in Bollywood at the moment is the Shilpa Shetty-Richard Gere smooch that has taken the sheen off the Aishwarya Rai-Abhishek Bachchan wedding on April 20. And, the best part is, a playful gesture has been blown out of proportion by India’s self-styled moral-keepers.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THIS WEEK, I watched Adoor Gopalakrishnan shoot his 10th and 11th films one after the other at Ambalappuzha, some 15 km from Aleppey or Alappuzha as it is now called. In the heart of Kerala’s scenic Kuttanad district, Aleppey has over the past few years caught the tourist eye with its backwaters and houseboats. There are still some parts there where time appears to have not moved beyond the 1940s, and it is this ambiance that Adoor hoped to capture in his movies. One of the pioneers of the New Indian Cinema of the 1970s, Adoor has directed just nine features in over three decades, a fact that speaks of his passion for perfection.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: foul-mouthed French teens.

WHILE THIS could probably be loosely called a teenage romantic comedy, L’Esquive (Games of Love and Chance) is about as far away from the usual Hollywood teenage histrionics as you can possibly get. It’s a tale of the awkwardness of adolescent love, told in the backdrop of Parisian housing units with a dash of cultural and financial desperation. This is Tunisian-born French director Abdel Kechiche’s second film, and is ultimately a rather touching piece of work.

Purporting “nerve shredding terror”, Adrift (aka Open Water 2) instead offers aphasia and eventual comatose. Invariably, watching six people tread water for over an hour will have that anaesthetizing effect. In a mildly interesting commentary on the stupidity of contemporary youth, a group of teenaged friends – seen earlier in the film cavorting on a spring break getaway, probably drunk and flashing their titties – reunite several years later older, unwiser, and having clearly not evolved. The egregiously chiselled stud of the sextet, Dan, commandeers a million-dollar yacht for their weekend cruise; somewhere in the middle of the ocean, they all decide to go for a swim. Someone forgets to lower the ladder. What follows is a fruitless and hilarious series of attempts to climb back onboard – grab onto the stern’s American flag (which symbolically tears, and is seen in close-up flittering in the wind), phone home via a wet cellphone, make a rope out of everyone’s swimwear – before each succumb to fatigue, self-inflicted wounds, or despair. Unlike the original Open Water’s scuba verite conceit (to which Adrift is a gimmicky and wholly unsanctioned ‘sequel’), the presentation here is nauseatingly commercial, while the potential for what lies beneath is incredibly ignored. Offsetting the inane and badly delivered dialogue in Open Water was a palpable surface tension, where real sharks would randomly break through the water. In Adrift, the threat of Jaws activity never eventuates – all the more bewildering, given when one of the characters is accidentally stabbed, plumes of shark-attracting blood cloud the water. In their absense, we get something far more terrifying: desperate, shitbrained young adults wondering if God will come to their rescue.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

DIRECTOR Jag Mundhra has often been associated with B-grade cinema. Films such as Private Moments, Monsoon, Tainted Love, Sexual Malice, Tropical Heat, The Other Woman and Vishkanya, bordered on the pornographic. But in 2000, he made Bawandar, a pleasing departure from his otherwise eminently forgettable repertoire.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

KIRSHNA has traveled to Deauville, that quaint Norman city on the French Atlantic coast. The last time he traveled, it was to Singapore, chasing his dream woman, Priyanka Chopra. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Rakesh Roshan’s Krrish, part of the Panorama in the ongoing 9th Deauville Asian Film Festival. Touted as the Indian Superman, Roshan’s son, Hrithik, donned a black leather skin-fit suit, and rose from a tiny secluded village – where his grandmother had kept him hidden from the malicious world – to save the world from evil. Just like our mythical hero, Krrish or Krishna also woos and weds (I suppose) Priyanka, a modern-day TV reporter, who meets the demi-god in the sylvan surroundings of India’s pastoral beauty.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: François Truffaut’s last word.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT was one of the most influential French New Wave directors, and consequently one of the most influential directors of all-time. His Antoine Doinel series helped herald a personal cinema previously unseen in world cinema, and his fervent canonisations of previous filmmakers did much to contribute to auteur theory and the importance of the director in the filmmaking process. However, he was also one of the most conventional of the New Wave directors – stylistically and in terms of politics and narrative. However, that’s not to say he’s dull; my favourite Truffaut film, Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) features constant tonal shifts and homages all told in a very engaging story. Arguably this is the same territory that Truffaut returns to in his final feature, Finally Sunday! (also known as Faithfully Yours).