Marriage Made In Celluloid

Freida Pinto in Trishna

Trishna is technically a British production, even though Mumbai filmmaker Anurag Kashyap is listed as a producer. It바카라�s one of the five India-themed films바카라�the others are Ribhu Dasgupta바카라�s debut film Michael, Akshay Kumar production Breakaway, Suseendran바카라�s Tamil film Azhagarsamy바카라�s Horse and Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara바카라�s Bengali film Chatrak (Mushrooms)바카라�that played in the last 10 days at the recent Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A sixth film, Pankaj Kapoor바카라�s Mausam, pulled out at the last minute.

TIFF, along with Cannes, Berlin and Sundance, is one of the most prestigious and high-profile international film festivals and the only one amongst them that has had a strong and consistent Indian presence. In recent years, TIFF has premiered films ranging from Vishal Bhardwaj바카라�s Maqbool, Nandita Das바카라�s Firaq to Kiran Rao바카라�s Dhobi Ghat and Kashyap바카라�s That Girl in Yellow Boots. Driven by the interest of the large desi diaspora, the festival has been attended by Bollywood A-listers like Shahrukh Khan, Karan Johar, Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar. The highlight of this year바카라�s TIFF was an interesting conversation between filmmaker Deepa Mehta and author Salman Rushdie on their collaboration on the film version of Midnight바카라�s Children, shot earlier this year in Sri Lanka and currently in post-production in Toronto.

Naseeruddin Shah in Michael

Media interest was the strongest on Freida Pinto. Trishna is Pinto바카라�s fourth film since her debut in Danny Boyle바카라�s Slumdog Millionaire. Her work since then has been uneven, but in Trishna she delivers her best performance to date. Hers is a fully developed, vulnerable character who ties her destiny to Jay, believing in their romance, although the man often overlooks her emotions. However, Riz Ahmed, who last year appeared in the British comedy The Four Lions, turns out to be the real star: seductive, charming, even as his character portrays negative tones. He is slated to play the lead in Mira Nair바카라�s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid바카라�s novel of the same name. While the third act of Trishna is drawn-out and repetitive, the film ably captures the quietude of Rajasthan and its fine hotels as also the street energy of Jaipur and Mumbai.

The splashy appearance this year was by Toronto favourite Akshay Kumar for the world premiere of his Breakaway (to be released as Speedy Singhs in India): his co-production with friend and Canadian businessman Ajay Virmani. Breakaway바카라�Virmani바카라�s effort to launch the film career of his son Vinay바카라�presents an interesting premise of a Sikh ice hockey team with no prospects rising to the top with the help of a Canadian coach (Rob Lowe). But the film, based on an uninspired script that takes sections from Gurinder Chadha바카라�s hit Bend it Like Beckham, lacks the energy and crowd-pleasing elements one expects from this genre. Kumar has a brief, low-key guest appearance in the film and is also present in the item number at the end.

While Anurag Kashyap was not present at TIFF this year, his name appeared on two films. In addition to Trishna, TIFF also showed Michael, the third film that Kashyap has produced after Udaan and Shaitan. The film rests on the performance of Naseeruddin Shah playing Michael, a disgraced cop in Calcutta, now a film projectionist and a DVD pirate, who must cope with his impending blindness, as he also receives threatening phone calls from a menacing stranger. The film starts on a high note: a broken down Michael (Shah, with his weathered face) standing in the middle of a busy Calcutta intersection. The veteran actor carries the film up to a point, till the limiting script by Debaloy Bhattacharya, based on director Ribhu Dasgupta바카라�s story, gives him no further room to explore the character. The cinematography, especially the night scenes of rain-drenched Calcutta, coupled with music and sound, create a dark mood, but eventually Michael does not work.

Chatrak

The other interesting films at the festival were the Tamil film Azhagarsamy바카라�s Horse바카라�director Suseendran바카라�s comic tale about a village planning a temple festival to please the rain gods; and Chatrak, Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara바카라�s slow-paced Bengali film about a man searching for his lost brother, who may be living in the forest as a wild child. It starts on an odd note: a young bald European soldier guards the border between India and Bangladesh. No explanation is advanced about how the soldier reached there. And much of the film itself was just as inexplicable.

The films aside, it was the conversation between Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie (at his witty best), moderated by TIFF바카라�s co-director Cameron Bailey, that proved to be a big success with the audience that packed a theatre in TIFF바카라�s spiffy new headquarters in downtown Toronto바카라�s Entertainment District on a weekday afternoon. Mehta and Rushdie showed 10 minutes of unrelated rough-cut clips from the film, wherein the audience spotted some familiar faces from Bollywood: Soha Ali Khan, Rajat Kapoor, Rahul Bose and Shahana Goswami. They shared several tidbits about the making of the film. Like how Rushdie originally wrote a 267-page script based on his novel, but had to trim it down when the team realised that they would not get funding for a two-part film. Mehta also spoke about how difficult it was to recreate the Bombay of the 1940s and 1950s in modern Mumbai. 바카라�Sri Lanka still resembles the post-colonial Bombay,바카라� she said. 바카라�And we felt safer in Sri Lanka바카라�, alluding, obviously, to the political problems that her previous films have faced in India.