Jigyaasa Review

Jigyaasa is a wannabe mirror to the goings on in the Hindi film industry, and if one is to believe it really mirrors what happens in Bollywood, then the message this crude films gives is that nothing but a sleep-your-way-to-the-top approach would work in the Hindi films industry.

Through the story of an aspiring actress called Jigyaasa (Hrishita Bhatt) who want to be a mega star, and who's been brought up amid the ethics, principles and values of her school teacher mother (Varsha Usgaonkar), director Faisal Saif sets out on what seems like a promising premise.

But instead of an eyeopener that should have set one thinking, Jigyaasa makes you cringe with acute discomfort at its crudeness, and the way in which it generalizes that only sexual favours and moral compromises abound. Treated with crude dialogue and interspersed with hardly-veiled references to well known incidents from Bollywood, Jigyaasa succumbs to the temptation of adding sleaze and cheap thrills of titillation to try and score at the box office. It comes up with a dud.

Instead of exciting possibility of depicting the internal clash of values that making it big in Bollywood actually could have demanded of the well raised aspiring actress, Jigyaasa actually ends up chronicling her compromises in a lasvicious manner.

When Jigyaasa the actress learns that the only way to the top is the sleeping rather than the walking route, she takes the plunge, and director Saif depicts it with great gusto, dwelling on each compromise. She sleeps with a producer to bag a role, then hits the sack with a female producer, gets into a slanging match with a director whom she accuses of having sexually molested her, supplies a homosexual partner to a promoter of a top awards show. Net net what could have been a Page 3 about Bollywood ends up as a sleazy ride that paints all of Bollywood black, universally damning it as sleazepot where the surefire route to success and stardom is sex.

Eminently forgettable music by Ram Shankar and crude dialogues, plus a complete rejection of any sensitivity in handling the subject by director Saif mars what was an interesting premise. Jigyaasa will definitely get Hrishitaa Bhatt noticed again as an actress with promise, albeit not right through the film. It was good to see Varsha Usgaonker again and she performs her simple and straightforward her role competently, as do the character actors, Rakesh Bedi, Milind Gunaji, Mukesh Tiwari and Jaya Bhattacharya and Kader Khan. However, Vikas Kalantri is a disappointment, still appearing self conscious and not too fluid in his expressions. Some more experience would help him. And, perhaps, a much better director too. That, actually, was something Jigyaasa needed, but alas, here's a good premise completely rubbished by bad direction and worse taste.

Don't waste your time with Jigyaasa.

Rating: *