Life Express

Rating: *

If you are a successful career woman and fast-tracking to the top job,would you want a child? What happens if you catch pregnant? Life Express takes this pertinent issue and makes a mockery of it. Tanvi (Sengupta) dresses in power suits,makes impressive points at conferences,and is promised the big promotion that she desires. As she tells her friend,she only lusts after money,position and power. So when she discovers she’s going to have a baby,she promptly goes off and gets rid of it. And then,along with her husband (Janjani),starts looking for a womb to rent.

What could the filmmakers be thinking of? The badly-made,hammily-acted Life Express shows us,with heavy moral opprobrium,a perfectly healthy woman,able to bear children,searching for a surrogate mother because she hankers after a corner office. And a poor village woman (Dutta) agreeing to the ridiculous proposition of staying with the expectant couple till the baby is delivered because ‘they don’t want people to talk’. Dutta gets to lecture on the joys of motherhood; Sengupta gulps and sobs. Ugh.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com