It’s refreshing to finally be able to say that Bollywood has arrived in town (courtesy of Cinemark’s Tinseltown South theatre, which has tentative plans to bring in more Indian movies in the future). Bewafaa (Unfaithful), is a lengthy romantic tragicomedy bearing the most identifiable hallmark of the Indian film – namely, plenty of show-stopping musical numbers that seem to spring full-bore from characters’ mouths with clockwork regularity. Love, oddly inappropriate laughter, and the ethical ramifications of what a responsible Hindi woman is to do when her beloved sibling expires during childbirth and leaves her stuck with twin daughters and a perpetually grieving husband are the main dishes of what unfortunately feels like a 20-course smorgasbord of tired and shopworn melodramatics. It’s enough to make even Douglas Sirk think seriously about dialing down the schmaltz. As Anjali – the sister forced by fate to forsake her Montreal-based rock-star drummer boyfriend, Raja (Kumar), and move back to Delhi with her dead sister’s husband – Kareena Kapoor radiates the sort of borderline-hysterical mood swings that typify so many Bollywood characters. When she’s not looking as if she just had a million-rupee makeover (in the morning, even), she’s contemplating the unthinkable: secretly reuniting with the now-famous rocker Raja to pursue the path of true love. The politics of adultery are a hot topic in every culture, but Bewafaa glosses over the most emotionally resonant echoes in favor of rafts of insanely uncatchy songs and a surreal sidestepping of the meat of the story: the cultural conventions that require Anjali to marry her late sister’s husband, an ultra-reserved businessman who sees the shade of his dead wife wherever he looks. It’s like Britney Spears marrying Wally Shawn. Come to think of it, there’s a movie in there somewhere. Just not this one.
This article appears in March 4 • 2005.