‘I’m Very Proud Of Being Part Of The Movie’ News24 –

Govind Menon’s Khwahish, released on June 6, 2003, was an oddity. It not only ripped off Arthur Hiller’s 1970 blockbuster Love Story, it also literally translated every dialogue of the original.

Although the dialogues, like most of everything else in this film, have been transcreated wholesale from Erich Segal’s epoch-making novel Love Story, the dialogue writer Shashi Wadia takes credit for the words that the Ryan O’Neal–Ali MacGraw clones are made to speak by director Govind Menon in his second feature film. Of course, the peppy MacGraw called O’Neal ‘Preppie’ in Love Story. Her clone Mallika Sherawat calls Himanshu Mallik ‘Sethji’ instead.

Dial Bollywood For Innovation

Menon’s first film Danger was largely ripped off from another Hollywood source (Bound). Now Menon goes at Arthur Hiller’s 1969 adaptation of Erich Segal’s novel with enormous enthusiasm. Scenes and words are simply relocated without a thought for copyright infringement.

The end result is fortunately more clonish than clownish. The initial interaction between the working-class firebrand Lekha and the diffident aristocrat Amar is amusing, but only if you aren’t familiar with the original material.

If you know Jenny’s smart one-liners and renewable quips in Love Story by heart, then Lekha sounds nothing more than a MacGraw disciple. A large part of the dialogues don’t work because they seem to be unthinking translations of the original. Also, to hear a young savvy woman of today like Lekha using words like “prayog” comes as a bit of a speed breaker in this fully revved-up homage to Hollywood’s abiding romance with romantic cinema.

To Menon’s credit, he does attempt to go beyond the original material at times. A sequence such as the one where Amar’s high-society (though blessedly not shrewish) mom visits Lekha and they share a serious woman-to-woman bonding over the music of R.D. Burman, or the one where Lekha walks in to a medicine store to bargain for and buy condoms on her honeymoon, or that closing moment when after Lekha’s death her father walks away from his son-in-law with tragic finality, do tickle the aesthetic palate. But barely so. And then it’s back to a slyly played cloning game.

Speaking of bare impact, the immense stress on the protagonists’ unclothed figures in the film’s promotional campaigns are completely misrepresentative of the film. For all its brash babble on condoms, smooches, sex and making babies, Khwahish is a film about love, togetherness and irreparable loss. Amar’s breakdown or his father-in-law’s animal-like protest against the gods at the thought of losing the woman they both love (Lekha) would’ve worked in a different, more homogenized context.

Under all her cleavage exhibition and smooches (which seem to be a peculiar fetish for the filmmaker—his other film Danger too stresses the tongue-to-tongue factor beyond decency), the film’s leading lady Mallika Sherawat plays—believe it or not—a student of Indian classical music.

In one of Menon’s most appallingly misguided sequences, Sherawat sings a raga at a live concert in Asha Bhosle’s voice, while the audience yawns, talks and walks out on her. In condemning the vulgarized depths of modern living, director Menon forgets he’s a part and perpetrator of that process of degeneration where art is substituted by instant cannibalization.

Still, there’s no denying the inbuilt charm and poignancy of some of the exchanges between the protagonists. Mallika Sherwat is a spirited performer. She, and the director, seem to have studied Ali MacGraw’s performance minutely in the original. Himanshu Mallik’s pinup-boy looks go well with his aristocratic part. But he needs to work on his expressions which tend to veer between excessively subdued and stiff. Evidently, he has been given a complementary role to his leading lady. The reactive impulse is hard to hold in place. But remember how capably Rishi Kapoor played a foil to Dimple Kapadia in Raj Kapoor’s Bobby?

Incidentally, Kapoor’s film was one of the better Love Story clones and so was Rajshri’s Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se. Khwahish falls short because of an almost complete failure to adapt the original source material to a native climate. Most of the time, the lead pair delivers its dialogues as though they’re doing a radio play.

While watching Shivaji Satam and new actor Mahamud Babai as the hero and heroine’s respective fathers, don’t even think of Ray Milland and John Marley in Love Story, or Pran and Premnath in Bobby. Milind Sagar’s music is mildly mellifluous. However, Uday Devare’s cinematography capturing the interiors of a working-class apartment in Pune or the lush greenery of Kerala is outstanding.

Curiously, Menon avoids confrontational drama between the protagonists’ rich and working-class dads. A while back, we had Shaad Ali in Saathiya doing a frame-by-frame transcreation of Mani Rathnam’s Alai Payuthe. When Govind Menon does a Love Story in Khwahish, he forgets to stir the by-now timeworn soup with the ladle of localization. He’s so busy being true to his source material that he forgets to be true to his own vision.

Subhash K. Jha spoke to Mallika Sherawat immediately after the release of Khwahish. “The response to my performance in Khwahish has been good. People know about Mallika now. Things have changed a bit. But it’s still an uphill struggle. I don’t have any godfathers in the film industry. Sometimes I feel terribly alone. But going to the theatres to check out Khwahish has been a great experience. Women are coming in spite of it being promoted as a ‘sexy’ film. I realize how important glamour and sex appeal are to the Hindi film heroine. But I don’t want to be labelled only sexy for life.”

Mallika didn’t think she would be saddled with a bold image. “Even the critics have liked me. And why just me, even my co-star Himanshu Malik has done a wonderful job. The fact that he was a decent and supportive human being really enhanced my performance.”

The Delhi girl, born in Rohtak, admitted the projection of Khwahish as a sexy film was a publicity gimmick. Demonstrating unusual pragmatism for a girl with an oomphy image, she sighed, “I had to somehow survive in this industry. So many new girls come and go and nobody gives them a second glance. At least Khwahish had a bumper opening. Otherwise I’d have ended up being just another small-town girl who got lost in showbiz.”

Her eyes light up when she remembers the day she was selected for Khwahish. “The director screentested 400–500 (!!!!!) girls before he finally selected me. Govind Menon warned me that this was a radical film where the girl talks about condoms and kissing without blushing. He told me the camera would be taken into a married couple’s bedroom. I was asked to prepare myself for doing things heroines don’t generally do in our films. To me there was no question of not doing it. It’s high time our movies stopped mothering audiences. I’m very proud of being part of Khwahish. I’m the first Jatni to make it in Bollywood. The press back home is going ballistic. My mother and grandmother were very worried after seeing the hot promos. But after seeing Khwahish, their misgivings vanished.”

She admitted her orthodox parents weren’t happy with her presence in what looked like a sleazy film. “My father didn’t speak to me for a whole year. My entire family was upset. Only my mother was with me. Wo to maa hai na. It was a really tough period. But now everyone is happy with me. My family bought tickets in the black market to see my film,” she squeals in delight.

The aggressively pitched sexual references in the dialogues didn’t bother the Rohtak girl. “I treated them like any other scene in the script. The important thing was to understand my character Lekha, and how she reacts to what any given situation.”

Mallika admitted the film had to be promoted as “sexy” to get the audience interested. Khwahish is a scene-by-scene facsimile of Erich Segal’s novel Love Story. Mallika mildly defends her film. “Even Jism was inspired by Double Indemnity and Devdas, I believe, has been done three times. I had read Erich Segal’s novel—who hasn’t?—but I hadn’t seen the film. I wanted to interpret the character in my own way.”

Mallika wasn’t completely new to movies. Using her real name Reema Lamba (“too many similar-sounding actresses around, and Mallika means the empress”), she actually played the second lead in Vashu Bhagnani’s Jeena Sirf Merre Liye. She describes it as an unpleasant experience. “Do you want me to be diplomatic about this? I was frankly disappointed. The role was something else when it was narrated to me. I had two songs and several crucial scenes and these were mentioned in the contract. It’d been very tough for me. Thank God for Khwahish. Whatever identity I’ve today is because of this film.”

Mallika claimed she got quite a lot of offers after Khwahish. “But I don’t want to sign anything that comes my way. I’ve been signed by Govind Menon for his next film. It’s a completely heroine-oriented film and totally different from Khwahish. I get to sport a completely desi ghagra-choli look. I really enjoyed working with Govind Menon. I liked how my role addressed itself to many issues such as double standards about sex and woman’s equality. I’d like to do a role like Tabu in Chandni Bar. But why would directors come to me for a role like that?”