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Film: "Darling"; Cast: Esha Deol, Fardeen Khan, Issha Koppiker;
Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Rating: ** One extra star goes to this
poor ghost film only for Esha Deol's startling presence and
sterling account of a woman whom love turns into a roaming spirit.
So let's raise a toast to the ghost. As the devilishly impish
"Darling", Esha flies high with her performance that has a
kite-like velocity to it.
Esha has never pulled so many strings from her histrionic kitty.
She brings depth, despair, pathos and humour into her rather
hazily-written role.
Esha comes across hazily for more than one reason. Like in "Aag",
Ram Gopal Varma gets together with his over-experimental director
of photography Amit Roy to shoot "Darling" in a bluish lens-tinted
light that covers the ghostly goings-on in a pall of gloom.
But Esha brightens up even the dullest frame. Not since Arjun
Sablok's "Na Tum Jano Na Hum" have we seen her seek such sensitive
alcoves in her personality. Taking long, restless romps between
frightful bouts of misadventures in cafes and cinema halls, Varma
still manages to give Esha the camera space to convey the restless
anguish of a woman scorned.
Restless, edgy and melancholic, Esha's eyes penetrate with
unblinking pathos into Fardeen Khan's guilt-laden conscience. She
whacks him on his shoulders and thighs, teases and torments him and
turns her tortured personality into a treatise on jilted love.
It's hard to feel any sympathy for Fardeen's husbandly betrayals,
especially since the actor is unable to come to grips with the more
emotional moments.
When he whines, cringes and sobs in front of his wife, it's Esha
silhouetted in the background, often with her head buried in her
face, who catches your attention.
Esha apart, it's perhaps time for Varma to stop filling up the
background of his frames with the same set of character actors,
like Zakir Husain who plays the annoying hero's sidekick-friend.
As for Upayendra Limaye as the investigating officer, he does a
cross between Chiranjeevi in "Pratibandh" and Shakti Kapoor in
"Insaaf".
It's also time the characters stopped looking so scruffy and
casual in Varma's scheme of things.
And poor Esha! She wears a white kaftan throughout. The wardrobe
lady never had it easier.
The first half has its bouts of genuine humour, especially in the
casual way Fardeen frolics and flirts as though Sanjeev Kumar in
"Pato Patni Aur Woh" was his role model.
Varma has a keen eye for domestic details, such as the breakfast
babble or the bedroom backchat. But Fardeen bonding with his little
son is nil.
The film also gets a surprising quotient of romantic overtures
hitherto unknown in Varma's dark, dry and dispassionate domain.
Watch Esha's pleading anguished eyes when at the end she tells her
errant lover, "Would you have married me if you were single?"
Love never stood a ghost of a chance in Ramu's cinema.
By Subhash K. Jha
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