Movie review: ‘Barkhaa’ – Mothballed plot and an even more mothballed treatment

There was a kind of film made in the 50s and 60s which had the leading man visit a hill station only to fall-in-love-at-first-glance with a ‘goriyaa’.

The leading man was usually accompanied by a friend who was also the comic relief, very useful in a film which would soon turn on the waterworks and maudlin violins and loud melodrama, because the ‘goriyaa’ would turn out to be an unsuitable girl, not ‘laayak’ for the ‘khandaan’.

There would be much ‘rona dhona’ after a bit of ‘naach gaana’, dialogues involving a quivering- lipped maa and a thunderous baap, and many relatives playing poison ivy.

I have news for you. In 2015, we are still making that film. The big question, of course, is why, to which I have found no answers.

Barkhaa (Sara Loren) plays a bar-dancer with a back-story, which includes a cad (Priyanshu Chatterjee) who promises her the moon, and, of course, drops her when he has had his wicked way with her. Current ‘majnu’ (Taaha Shah) moons about trying to convince her of his noble intentions, and we keep waiting for the time when the father (Puneet Issar) comes on all heavy, and the mother starts beating her chest. ‘Yeh pyaar nahin, nadaani hai’, she wails.

Why? Because, of course, bar dancers have no ‘izzat’, and live in bad ‘mahaul’, and all. Sonny boy would of course get tainted because he has had the bad luck to fall for a fallen woman, and the temerity to bring her in front of them (the parents).

Maybe the intention of the film was to tell us that ladies who dance for a living also have the right to respectability, which is wonderful, but a mothballed plot and an even more mothballed treatment isn’t the way forward.

“Kya tum mere ghar ki izzat banogi?” Yes, I heard this line. I kid you not.