Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Anubhav
Anubhav: An Actor’s Tale
The title of the film makes it sound as if it is about an actor’s experiences in the film industry, but what the eponymous protagonist goes through, can happen to anyone.
Rajeevnath’s Anubhav: An Actor’s Tale is about an actor (Sanjay Suri), who struggles along with his friend Adi (Anoop Menon—also the writer of the film) to get a break, whiling away the time doing inane TV serials.
Because she saw him in a rather tacky production of Macbeth, rich girl Meera (Gul Panag) pursues him relentlessly, till they get married. Adi manages to get a producer for his version of Hamlet, with an item-number, but the moneybags dies before the film can be completed.
Meera gives birth to a child who needs an operation that would cost Rs 20 lakh. The doctor (Mita Vashisht), who admits to being a “bad woman” sends Anubhav to a pimp (Ran Zutshi) who turns him into a highly paid gigolo. Anubhav hides from his wife the fact that their daughter survived and is undergoing treatment, and pretends he has a job when the money starts coming in.
The director makes no attempt to understand the social conditions of a gigolo’s profession, assuming that everyone who sells their body must have a ‘majboori’ behind it, and instead of a look at today’s sexually open lifestyle turns the film into a Laga Chunari Mein Daag kind of melodrama with the genders reversed. At one point Anubhav expresses disgust at the kind of women he has to bed, and even there the director is bit off the mark—women who can afford to pay for a gigolo will hardly have body odour and “dirty necks”. And the women he is seen with look pretty glamorous—including the one (Sudha Chandran) who plays his mother in a serial.
You hardly sympathise with Anubhav’s plight, when helpless husbands thank him for doing a socially important job and then, miraculously, a satisfied client conveniently dies and leaved him a fortune. He becomes a star and starts over with a clean slate. It swings from implausible to simplistic, with just an unsavoury mess in between.
Rajeevnath is a fairly well known director from Kerala, so manages to get stars like Nedumudi Venu, Bharat Gopi and even Jackie Shroff for meaningless cameos, but the most giggle-worthy performances are by Mita Vashisht (who ought to have known better) and Raj Zutshi. Sanjay Suri must have thought he was being very brave doing this role, but it won’t take his career anywhere.
The title of the film makes it sound as if it is about an actor’s experiences in the film industry, but what the eponymous protagonist goes through, can happen to anyone.
Rajeevnath’s Anubhav: An Actor’s Tale is about an actor (Sanjay Suri), who struggles along with his friend Adi (Anoop Menon—also the writer of the film) to get a break, whiling away the time doing inane TV serials.
Because she saw him in a rather tacky production of Macbeth, rich girl Meera (Gul Panag) pursues him relentlessly, till they get married. Adi manages to get a producer for his version of Hamlet, with an item-number, but the moneybags dies before the film can be completed.
Meera gives birth to a child who needs an operation that would cost Rs 20 lakh. The doctor (Mita Vashisht), who admits to being a “bad woman” sends Anubhav to a pimp (Ran Zutshi) who turns him into a highly paid gigolo. Anubhav hides from his wife the fact that their daughter survived and is undergoing treatment, and pretends he has a job when the money starts coming in.
The director makes no attempt to understand the social conditions of a gigolo’s profession, assuming that everyone who sells their body must have a ‘majboori’ behind it, and instead of a look at today’s sexually open lifestyle turns the film into a Laga Chunari Mein Daag kind of melodrama with the genders reversed. At one point Anubhav expresses disgust at the kind of women he has to bed, and even there the director is bit off the mark—women who can afford to pay for a gigolo will hardly have body odour and “dirty necks”. And the women he is seen with look pretty glamorous—including the one (Sudha Chandran) who plays his mother in a serial.
You hardly sympathise with Anubhav’s plight, when helpless husbands thank him for doing a socially important job and then, miraculously, a satisfied client conveniently dies and leaved him a fortune. He becomes a star and starts over with a clean slate. It swings from implausible to simplistic, with just an unsavoury mess in between.
Rajeevnath is a fairly well known director from Kerala, so manages to get stars like Nedumudi Venu, Bharat Gopi and even Jackie Shroff for meaningless cameos, but the most giggle-worthy performances are by Mita Vashisht (who ought to have known better) and Raj Zutshi. Sanjay Suri must have thought he was being very brave doing this role, but it won’t take his career anywhere.
Labels: Cinemaah
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