2/5

Bas Ek Pal

Director: Onir

Cast: Juhi Chawla, Urmila Matondkar, Jimmy Shergill, Sanjay Suri and Rehaan Engineer

Nikhil (Sanjay Suri) meets Anamika (Urmila Matondkar) at a nightclub but she soon disappears into anonymity after the meeting. Nikhil waits for her for many days and then one night when he is out with his friends, he meets her at the same pub where she has come with her friends.

A bullet is fired and Nikhil is jailed. If My Brother Nikhil was about homosexuality and AIDS, Bas Ek Pal is about unwilling sex between two men where Sanjay Suri who is unwilling is sodomised. Out on bail, he stalks Anamika. Her friend Ira Malhotra (Juhi Chawla) whose husband has been traumatizing her, goes ahead with a relationship outside her marriage with Jimmy Shergill and returns to her husband again to be physically abused all over.

The casting of the film has ensured that the film is primarily a multiplex one. The performances are bound to get acclaim from a certain section of the audience. Incidentally another film releasing along with Bas Ek Pal, which is Pyaar Ke Side Effects, is also targeting a similar audience and hence the viewership could be split between these two films.

Bas Ek Pal is interesting in parts, but certain scenes lack justification and will be subject to questions that multiplex audiences (read pseudo intellectuals) keep asking at least from a filmmaker like Onir, who already has a film like My Brother Nikhil to his credit.

Made on a budget of Rs 27 million (Rs 2.70 crore), the film has interesting music, which holds up the film along with cinematographer Sachin Kumar’s work. But Urmila who has been paid Rs 2.8 million for the film doesn’t seem to have done justice to her role.