Will January set the tone?

Will Hindi film industry be able to sustain the diversity in the year 2005, asks Saibal Chatterjee.

One could not have asked for more. The four films that have hit the screens on the opening weekend of 2005 straddle virtually the entire range of Indian filmmaking. But will this fortuitous burst of diversity really set the tone for the rest of the year? Bollywood would indeed be an infinitely better place if it did.

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Vaada, a conventional love triangle from the Vashu Bhagnani stable, is rooted firmly in Bollywood’s mainstream traditions although its star cast – Arjun Rampal, Amisha Patel and Zayed Khan – isn’t exactly of the sort that could blow away the winter chill that has been hanging over the box office for a while. Much will hinge on how director Satish Kaushik has crafted this tale of a pretty woman, her blind husband and an infatuated former boyfriend.

Playing alongside Vaada in the urban multiplexes this week are three much smaller films that have nothing in common either with each other or with the mass entertainer they are up against. Rog, Pooja Bhatt’s second film as director, furthers the Bhatt camp’s exploration of love, obsession and sexuality (Raaz, Jism, Paap…).It is a formula that is believed to give low-budget films much greater commercial viability than they would otherwise have.

Rog has no big stars. Irrfan Khan, the only tried-and-tested name in the cast, is supported by adman Suhel Seth and leggy South African model Ilene Hamman. What the film has going for it is the promise of sexual content, dollops of it.

Paris-based Vijay Singh’s Indo-French co-production OneDollar Curry, which has aroused a fair bit of curiosity on the Page 3 circuit because of the presence of billionaire hotelier Vikram Chatwal in the cast, is competing with first-time Los Angeles-based director Shonali Bose’s intense Amu, featuring Konkona Sensharma and activist-turned-actress Brinda Karat in a mother-daughter drama woven around the tragic 1984 anti-Sikh riots.