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SAAWARIYA
Directed, Produced, & Edited by Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Written by Bhansali & Prakash Kapadia
Director of Photography, Ravi K. Chandran
Music by Monty/Lyrics by Sameer
Released by Sony Pictures Home Entertaiment
Hindi with English subtitles
India. 138 mins. Rated PG
With Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Rani Mukherjee & Salman Khan
Special Features: “Making the Music” featurette with short cast & crew interviews & behind-the-scenes footage. Premiere night footage. Trailer. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean & Thai subtitles.

What do Fyodor Dostoevsky, Italian existentialism, and India’s Bollywood have in common? Very little – except for the fact that they have all put their own, very different spin on a magical love story between a shy and lonely man and a woman haunted by an absent lover. Based on Dostoevsky’s short story “White Nights” (radiantly adapted in black and white by Luchino Visconti in 1957’s Le Notti Bianche), Bollywood’s answer to the great Russian writer is a sugarcoated extravaganza ultimately lacking any substance or sweetness. While the dazzling carnival atmosphere and lavish costumes of Moulin Rouge took you on a mad fairytale ride, the similarly eye-popping tricks used in Saawariya fail to divert from the pure absurdity of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s musical farce.

Set in an isolated, dream-like town where prostitutes and drunks make up the majority, wandering musician Raj (Backstreet Boy-that-never-was Ranbir Kapoor) encounters the beautiful Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) crying on a canal bridge. A pop ballad dripping with Kraft cheese immediately swells up as Raj professes his passion for Sakina (she’s just so beautiful!), and she bounces back and forth between wide-eyed gazes and forced, schoolgirl giggles. (She’s very indecisive.) After almost a year since her lover left town, she obsessively waits at the bridge night after night for his return, and isn’t quite sure how to handle Raj’s sudden attentions. The film goes on in this manner (they’re together, cheesy pop number, they’re not together, cheesy pop number) for 138 minutes. It doesn’t take long to realize that glittering lights and moonlit canals just aren’t going to cut it.

Fortunately, all is not lost. A sassy, sacrificial prostitute adds a touch of grace and welcomed vulgarity to a cast that, otherwise, may very well have overdosed on cupcakes. Played to the delectable hilt by Rani Mukherjee, Gulabji conceals her love for Raj behind indifferent shrugs and a c’est la vie philosophy – instead of crying over her one year anniversary of “service” she throws herself a “birthday” party. Sadly, her scenes are few and far between, and in a film that is too long, and in which the Indian government’s censorship is heavily felt (no kissing allowed), Saawariya is all show and no substance. B. Bastron