The Film: Khwahish
Perry Pictures. Khwahish (A) is the story of a boy and a girl who are in love with each other. They get married and have to struggle to make both ends meet, but once the boy finishes his studies and gets a job, they lead a comfortable life till calamity strikes. The wife is about to die of blood cancer. The helpless husband tries to give her all the pleasures within and beyond his reach and for this, he even swallows his ego and seeks financial help from his father with whom he can.t see eye to eye. Ultimately, the wife dies. The film is heavily inspired from the Hollywood hit, Love Story.
The depressing angle in the second half leaves a bad taste in the mouth. The first half also has too much of verbosity and philosophy, which bore the audience. But the effort to titillate the viewers with sex-laden bedroom dialogue, revealing costumes and kissing scenes is all too obvious. The effort does pay off but besides titillation, there.s little else to entertain. Rather, some things are so weird that they put off the viewer completely. For instance, the hero calls his father .Sir., the heroine refers to her husband as .Sethji., her mother-in-law as .Mrs. Ranawat. and her father also by his name, Ulhas. Nothing seems to be normal here. In fact, so strange are the inter-personal relationships that the entire family appears to have descended from a different planet. To make matters worse, the tension between the family members is not explained! So abnormal are the relationships that the wife once tells her husband that his mother had telephoned to ask what he liked the most so that she could arrange for that for his birthday. Before he had got married, he used to live with his mother and still, she had to ask her daughter-in-law for his likes and dislikes! Govind Menon.s screenplay is as half-baked as Shashi Wadia.s dialogue.
Himanshu Malik has a fair screen presence but does an average job. He is especially wooden in dramatic scenes. Mallika Sherawat acts naturally and confidently but is not heroine material. If Mallika exposes her anatomy freely, so does Himanshu. Shivaji Satam is alright. Mahamud Babai overacts terribly as Mallika.s father. The rest simply fill the bill.
Direction (Govind Menon) is weak. Camera movements are minimal and scenes are lengthy, slow and repetitive. The singular aim of the director seems to have been to cater to the baser instincts of human beings but the story he has chosen for it is quite unsuitable for the purpose. Emotions fail to touch the heart completely. Milind Sagar.s music is a mixed bag. .Jaaneman. is the best song, followed by .Gungunati hai. and .Hum dono hain khoye. which are fairly well-tuned numbers. A couple of songs are average. Song picturisations have a lot of oomph. Camerawork and other technical values are alright.
On the whole, Khwahish has sex as its trump card but one which will not take the film far. Weak in merits, it will fail to satisfy the viewer, its depressing post-interval portion only adding to its tale of woes. The only silver lining is that it has been sold dirt cheap and will, therefore, not entail losses to its distributors.
Released on 6-6-.03 at Minerva, Eros (matinee) and 12 other cinemas of Bombay thru Durga Corporation. Publicity: good. Opening: fair. .......Also released all over.
