Aishwarya Rai’s comeback film Jazbaa looks disappointing already

The trailer of Aishwarya Rai’s comeback film Jazbaa was launched today, and from the first impression, the film does not seem to live up to the standard of Seven Days, the 2007 South Korean film that inspired it.

Seven Days was a quiet but nerve-wracking thriller centred on a hugely successful advocate who has seven days to save a person from death row if she — the advocate - is to rescue her kidnapped daughter. The film's storyline derived its thrust from the psychological games that sundry players play with the protagonist, played by Yunjin Kim.

As the trailers make it clear, the original film relied on hard evidence and a calm (under the circumstances) approach to helping the death row convict secure release. Rai in Jazbaa, on the other hand, hardly comes across as a hard-nosed lawyer who must think rationally so that her daughter may return to her.

There is much head-banging and unnecessary dialogues (even the slick Irrfan Khan has gone over the top here) that give one the impression that the film will Bollywoodise and thus bastardise what is a great Korean thriller. Rai slapping the convict at the end confirms this.

Why did Rai choose to return to the marquee with this film? Directed by Sanjay Gupta, who is known for making violent gangster flicks, Jazbaa is unlikely to burnish her reputation. If she was interested in doing a tough role, she would have been better off looking for a script like that of Sarkar Raj, the 2008 sequel to Sarkar in which she skillfully essayed an industrialist looking to set up a plant in rural Maharashtra.

Apart from Jazbaa, Rai has Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil lined up, in which she will share screen space with Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. Plot details are sketchy, but the film is said to be about the love between a man and a woman who share a significant age difference, with the woman being older.

Now that is a film worth looking forward to. Rai, to me, is the epitome of the dreamy romantic heroine who shone on screen even in a brief part in Mohabbatein. In that film she played a young woman who gives up her love – and life – in accordance with her father’s wishes, but continues to inhabit the screen as a beautiful, doomed presence.

Rai was last seen in the 2010 Sanjay Leela Bhansali starrer Guzaarish, in which she played a nurse and ultimately a lover to a quadriplegic patient played by Hrithik Roshan. That film called for a certain silence, and Rai may have rightly wagered on Bhansali to pull it off since his Black had shown him capable of helming a different kind of cinema. But Guzaarish never touched the emotional crescendos of Black, and the film tanked at the box office.

This was saddening since Rai has had a profitable relationship with Bhansali. He brought out the actress in her in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and made her the centerpiece of that painting of a film, Devdas. But their association was short-lived. Some of the roles that she was meant to essay, such as that in Bajirao Mastani, are now being done by Deepika Padukone, another storehouse of talent.

Rai's best work continues to be roles such as those in Mohabbatein, in which she is permitted to revel in her femininity. Be it as the lovelorn maiden in Devdas or the devoted wife in Guru, she has consummately played characters that espouse a quiet dignity even as they undergo intense trauma. Her storybook beauty adds an element of numinosity to her portrayals, taking her characters to another realm.

Fortunately, Rai will star in Johar’s film, whose script will have her playing a woman of her age but one that will situate her in a romantic setting. While today’s directors may not see her as a Mastani or a Leela – a problem that almost all actresses face after reaching a certain age - her admirers should not have to watch her in gratuitously violent and ill-scripted roles like Jazbaa.