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Friday, April 19, 2024
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BOLLYWOOD APARTMENT
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: * ½
Mundhra`s Apartment reads like a frighteningly disembodied episode,
neither passionate nor bloody enough to qualify as a genuine slasher flick, of a
television mini-series built around the theme of suburban loneliness. We`ve seen
many films on the theme of what Mumbai does to the outsider. This one, by its
own subverted logic, shows the outsider, a mentally disturbed girl from rural
Maharashtra, creating havoc in a neatly-arrange spick-and-span apartment block
somewhere in downtown Mumbai.
Neetu Chandra is the life and death of this almost inert suspense thriller. She
acts strange and with reason. Her character suffers from acute insecurities.
Neetu makes her home in chic air-hostess Tanushree Dutta`s home and resents the
city girl`s debonair boyfriend (Rohit Roy, seeming to enjoy his part).
The build-up is a little too slow for a slasher-movie (apartment gone to the
devil!). By the time the payback is on, we are much too distracted by the
trivial atmospherics and incidental characters played by guys and women who seem
to have been rejected in fashion shows in the first round itself.
The four principal characters hold together the unhurried plot. Anupam Kher as
Tanushree`s poet neighbour is an engaging diversion. Other distractions like a
tacky item song and intermittent song breaks choreographed like a high-school
function, are a huge impediment.
It`s Neetu`s show all the way. The girl knows how to hold an expression without
looking like she was doing it for effect. Wish there was more to hold up her
performance. Most of the time she performs in a vacuum.
Lately Jagmohan Mundhra made films like Provoked and Shoot On
Sight which had a point to make. In Apartment he strolls back
into the province of the pointless.
Preeti Sengupta (Tanushree Dutta) is an airhostess living in with her boyfriend Karan Malhotra (Rohit Roy). They share a nice 2BHK apartment in the northern suburbs of Mumbai and are befriended by their elderly neighbor Madhusudan Tanha (Anupam Kher), a struggling poet and lyricist. Tanha is a loner living with his only companion, a Persian cat whom he lovingly calls Shehzadi. Preeti is possessive and has issues with trust. When she mistakenly suspects her boyfriend to be unfaithful, she throws him out of the house but soon realizes she can`t afford the payment on the apartment on her own. On the advice of a fellow airhostess, she advertises for a tenant to share her apartment. Enter Neha Bhardwaj (Neetu Chandra), a modest small-town girl asking for accommodation. Very impressed by her simplicity and respectfulness, Preeti believes she has found a perfect roommate. The two girls soon become close - their camaraderie leads them to even become companions. Until things begin to go disastrously wrong - slowly and steadily. Preeti`s seemingly normal life is thrown off gear - with a series of incidents that take her by surprise. Is it just co-incidence or is someone deliberately causing all the trouble? Is Neha really as simple as she seems? In the grip of mystery, unforeseen and gruesome events and murder as its heinous best, the truth seems shocking as it in folds. As Neha and Preeti are torn apart by suspicion, deceit and betrayal, the question is - will the romance between Karan and Preeti survive or...
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