7 Khoon Maaf Movie Review

7 Khoon Maaf
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj
Starring: Priyanka Chopra, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Naseeruddin Shah, John Abraham
Rating:   * * *

Imagine a cocktail party full of dangerously beautiful women and handsome but decadent men. Imagine a home where such a party is thrown--inherited furniture, heavy drapes, smoke filled air and a butler who knows the bar as well as who drinks what. Now imagine a film where a sucession of such men trip in and out of the door. It makes a wonderful series of vignettes, with Susanna, the hostess, played by Priyanka Chopra, graciously allowing herself to be used and abused. Sadly, though, it's no more than that.

Moody, atmospheric, marked by tremendous performances, and yet somehow the parts dont make the whole. Not for lack of trying. Susannah (Priyanka Chopra) is a tigress on screen. Sometimes slapped around, sometimes loving with abandon, sometimes happy in lust, and sometimes plain jaded, she is a woman of any freedom-loving woman's dreams. Mistress of a sprawling home, with no particular known income, she lives in decaying splendour like our very own Scarlett O'Hara. She has an ancient maid (Usha Utthup, in a surprise appearance), a discreet butler, a one-eyed jockey (for she is the mistress of several racehorses) and a loyal little boy whom she decides to put in school (a bitter-sweet debut by Naseeruddin Shah's younger son, Vivaan).

The plot is over-written as is to be expected in a film which becomes an extended cocktail party. The guests are fascinating, representing her lucklessness in love. There's the cruel army major (Neil Nitin Mukesh, excellent), the rock star (John Abraham, as good as he can get as the drug-addled, sex crazed Jimmy Stetson aka Jamshetji Rathore), the sensitive poet with a nasty streak (Irrfan Khan, as always brilliant), the kind doctor (Naseeruddin Shah, with a jolly Bonglish accent), the lascivious police officer (Annu Kapoor), and the handsome Russian (Aleksandr Dyachen, who should immediately be imported to Bollywood). All of them have their kinks and claws, and the pleasure is in discovering them.

Susanna Sahib's search for love takes her into territory that is often horrifying, but somehow the writing ensures that each episode remains a brilliantly shot and enacted short story, never quite integrating into a whole, introducing us to several guests but not quite involving us. Vishal Bharadwaj makes Priyanka act out of her skin, and she tries hard, subjecting herself to things onscreen most Hindi film stars wouldn't (don't get your hopes up, boys, Hindi film heroine standards are low).

Bharadwaj tries to give Susanna (sometimes Sultana, sometimes Sunaina, sometimes rock groupie Susy and other times the mysterious Anna) a reality by rooting her struggles with that of India. Oh, look, as Susanna marries her first husband, Operation Blue Star is happening. Oh, look, there's the Babri Masjid demolition as she meets her Kashmiri poet, oh look again there's the Pokharan nuclear explosion. And yet again, the IC-814 hijack.

It's not to say that there is no joy in watching Saat Khoon Maaf. Not at all. There are several. Priyanka Chopra, for one, showing tremendous courage. The men, for being uniformly engaging. The cinematography which succeeds in creating an atmosphere of lurking menace. The art direction, which almost threatens to overwhelm the film. The music, which is so perfectly matched to the movie. And yes, even Ruskin Bond, the writer, in a special role, saying the line that sums up the movie: It all comes down to love, sweetheart.

Indeed it does. Pity then that the film is a series of one night stands. What we wanted from the operatic Bharadwaj was an affair to remember.