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No roses for Valentine Days
A scene from "Valentine Days", now showing at cinema halls across Delhi.
VALENTINE DAYS
(At Odeon and other Delhi theatres)
LOVE WAS never so distasteful, never more repugnant. This love affair of an American babe discovering the joys of Indian values is a tame affair at best. At worst, it is a sham. It aims to talk of rare moments of pleasure and gives you lasting pain. This is a rare film though - it is faulty all the way through. The consistency of its mediocrity would have been amazing had it not been so appalling. This is neither parallel nor niche or commercial cinema. It is just a case of fools rushing in where the wise men fear to tread.
This film starts off - in hindsight one wishes it had not! - as the story of Gina Marie seeking love and salvation in India. With a predictability that is the monopoly of Bollywood dream merchants she comes across men who do what many men are likely to do when suffering from one of their frequent momentary lapses of reason. The girl is assaulted, the hero plays the gallant. But no, they don't fall in love or face parental opposition. This girl loves somebody else. Vishal pines for her. As does Aditya. As does... well who cares! It soon becomes a game of `she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me... .'. Meanwhile, director Sumeer Sabharwal adds the only saving grace of the film. Gina has a stepmother who would make Cinderella's family appear angels from heaven. Gina can marry the guy of her choice only if the guy chooses to sleep with her mother too. Her straight in-your-face demand for gratification jolts you from your slumber, a condition increasingly likely to afflict the viewers as they sit through this 16-reel film.
The little moment of suspense passes off raising nothing more than a blink. And, of course, we have the stepmother realising the folly of cradle snatching at the end!
The film has in its cast guys and girls who are neither actors nor stars. They simply stumble from one reel to another, mouthing their lines like an obedient child before the oral test in school. The worst of the lot is also the person who is seen the most. She is Gina, probably deported from liberal Uncle Sam's land for obscene exposure. In her debut film here, she does not need a pretext to shed her clothes; she needs a reason to get into them. And she obviously felt that one cannot learn acting. So she probably did not enrol for acting classes before coming up with this venture. One wishes she had enrolled, and still be a student, saying her lines in a classroom of 30. This way, we would not have been inflicted by this amateurish display. The way it is, she ends up playing the lead in a film meant for the masses but watched by less than a hundred on the first day's first show. Credit to the audiences who smelled that there are too many thorns in this Valentine Days saga.
As for other actors, well, they are like faceless guys who have got their heart in the wrong place. Or maybe, the right thing at the wrong place. They could as well have been characters from Hansal Mehta's "Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai". They are as much duds. And only as appealing. Or simply guys who refused to grow. If this is what puppy love does to people, celibacy is an option worth considering for the next few years.
While Gina imbues her role of an American sizzler trying her hand at Indian values, with as much emotion as one invests in tying the shoes laces, the whole cast enjoys the proceedings as much as one does in pulling the drawers strings after you know what.
It is a flimsy film with a flimsy script, flimsy characters, flimsy performances. It has been released nearly a fortnight after the Valentine's Day. One wishes it had not. No roses, no wows, no pledges of eternity, Valentine Days' days at the box office are numbered. Be patient. Better films have to come your way after the World Cup. Meanwhile, watch cricket, even Netherlands versus Namibia match is likely to be a show of greater skill.
ZIYA US SALAM
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