To counter her obvious efforts, co-star Rhehan Malliek narrows his eyes each time he is expected to show some emotion.

Together, the two of them play along with a farce of a film. One that borrows liberally from every romantic movie cliché known to audiences, cobbled together by director Prem Raj in the fervent hope that his leading lady’s charm will save the day.

It doesn’t. Even the presence of French actress Isabelle Adjani doesn’t lend a credible tone to “Ishkq in Paris” – when you saddle an actress of her calibre with a dubbed Hindi accent and a half-baked role that involves her batting eyes at Shekhar Kapur, it doesn’t do your film any good.

Zinta plays the oddly named Ishqk, a photographer who hates commitment and has daddy issues. Rhehan Malliek plays Akash (or cash with an A which is how he introduces himself to Ishqk), an agent (what sort of agent, we are never told) who also has commitment issues and the ability to seem creepy when he thinks he’s being romantic.

The two meet on a train; she spends the night showing him around Paris and they decide never to meet again. But then how would Raj fit the rest of the clichés? So post-interval, we have another meeting in an Indian wedding – a Bollywood number with Salman Khan and more fake angst spewed by both characters.

Neither Zinta nor Malliek have any chemistry – even their hugs feel awkward, as if they wanted to pull away immediately. The Paris in the film is full of seedy cafes and lanes that don’t evoke any kind of romance. Adjani is completely out of place and depth in the film, making you wonder why she accepted it in the first place.

Zinta does display some of her famous charm and in places, you do catch a glimpse of her old self. She’s certainly a more accomplished and effortless actor than her co-star. Perhaps with a better leading man, “Ishkq in Paris” might have been your average romantic film – one that you could have watched without much trouble.

As it stands though, it’s a mediocre film, one that was supposed to showcase one of our favourite leading ladies, but instead just shows us what a shadow of her past she’s become.

The 27-year-old actor, nephew of Bollywood star Anil Kapoor, plays a double role in “Aurangzeb” – a crime thriller that opens in cinemas on Friday.

Kapoor spoke to Reuters on being compared to Amitabh Bachchan’s son, how Bollywood has changed his life in a year and why he doesn’t think cinema promotes rape.

Q: How was it playing a double role so early in your career?

A: It was the coolest thing to get it so early in you career, when you don’t even know what your capabilities are. You grow up watching films like these and wonder when you’ll get to play a role like that. It’s the eternal (Martin) Scorsese, old-school Yash Raj (Chopra) with Ram Gopal Varma. It has so many elements to it. I jumped at the chance. It’s the coolest thing to get to slap yourself when there is nobody in front of you. The double role is there for a reason – it’s not frivolous or there for a commercial reason.

Q: You mentioned Yash Raj and Scorsese. Is the film inspired by these film-makers and their work?

A: What happens with us is that we always look for referencing, when we see a film or a promo or even a human being. I was constantly being told that you look like Abhishek Bachchan.

Q: Was it annoying to be constantly compared to him?

A: No, it was not, because it was a very myopic view. Because he had worn a ganji (vest) in “Yuva” and I wore something similar in “Ishaqzaade”. When you see Aurangzeb’s trailer, you want to co-relate it to “The Departed” or “Infernal Affairs” or “Don” because that’s what comes to our mind when we think of identical faces. It’s a very myopic way of looking at a film or a person. Thankfully today, a year later, nobody asks me how it feels to look like Abhishek Bachchan.

I don’t find it as a bad thing that people are referencing “Aurangzeb” to something – that means we have made something that people already have an awareness for and are connecting with. The intrigue is created … it’s a very modern-day interpretation of that world. We believe that the underworld has evolved into having a political nexus in Gurgaon. If you read the papers, you will see that there is land-grabbing and that farmers are being robbed of their land at a pittance, which is sold to corporates for big money.

Q: What has changed in the last one year since “Ishaqzaade” released?

A: Wow, it’ll be a year. A lot has changed around me. I have not changed so much, if that makes any kind of sense.

Q: What’s changed?

A: People, perceptions, understanding. You lose a bit of privacy, which is fair. I am happier, I am more stable – there is an equilibrium in my mind which exists now, which might not have existed then, because I was dealing with a lot more than just my film’s release. I have found my true calling and people have told me by seeing my film and saying that yes, this is your true calling.

I would like to hold on to what I was … you are called a star and people roam around you to make sure everything is sorted. Life is much more convenient. But mostly, people who didn’t believe in you are suddenly your best friends. That’s the most honest change you see. If you are successful, people around you change. Success allows you (to) suss out who your true friends are.

Q: Do you feel like a star then?

A: I don’t think we are stars, this new young generation. We are one film old and are being given this pedestal only because there has been a lack of new actors for a while. So now the hunger that the media has had, has been quenched. We’ve all been accepted, that’s a given. The value of stardom is something else. You cannot get out of your house – that is the level of stardom I have seen with someone like a Salman Khan, hanging out with him. With Anil Kapoor, you cannot get off stage because the whole stage has been surrounded by people. We don’t have that level of stardom for sure. We are also more accessible to people, they know too much about us, so there is no star quality … I don’t live in this fantasy that I’m a star because I’m not. I’m a good actor and if I sustain this, then I’ll become a star. But that is up to me and my work.

Q: There was a bit of criticism about “Ishaqzaade” that it promotes rape. Do you agree?

A: Films are a mirror to reality. I don’t think films are the only thing that influences people. There is also an upbringing involved. There is a thought process, a society you grow up in. I wouldn’t dwell on films leading to a person raping somebody. There is a lot more to it, psychologically. The fact remains that we have honour killings in our country. In “Ishaqzaade”, he marries her and sleeps with her with her consent and they are killed in the end for that. The fact is that cinema is not the be-all and end-all of existence.

(Edited by Tony Tharakan)

“Gippi”, written and directed by Sonam Nair, does just that.

The film, which opened in Indian cinemas this week, is the coming-of-age tale of a teenager grappling with her weight, her first period, boys and life in general.

It’s Nair’s feature film debut and the 27-year-old said she used many of her own experiences for the movie.

“It’s shocking that this hasn’t been talked about, I thought let’s make a film about myself,” Nair told Reuters in an interview.

“I was fat and that was my big thing in life, so I wrote about that, and Karan (Johar) liked it and agreed to produce it.”

While Bollywood has explored coming-of-age stories in the last few years with films such as “Udaan” and “Wake Up Sid”, they have been mostly about male characters.

But Nair said growing up for girls was vastly different and that’s why she wanted to write about it.

“I thought I would write a film which I find amazingly fun and I don’t care if it’s not some deep, meaningful social commentary,” she said.

Riya Vij makes her Bollywood debut playing Gippi in the film.

“Every girl goes through this phase – it’s great that there’s actually a movie on it,” she said. “Gippi was insecure at that age and so was I.”

(Editing by Tony Tharakan)

Sonam Nair’s “Gippi” is the coming-of-age tale of a teenage girl who stumbles through life dealing with the typical crises of adolescence. Boys, parents, body image, acne and Shammi Kapoor come together to form the crux of this story, one that was probably written with the help of a handbook on how to script a teen movie.

Nair’s film is predictable and devoid of any surprises but also charming in parts. Gippi’s relationship with her mother (Divya Dutta) and brother are where the charm kicks in and Nair deals with these moments well.

But, like a bad driver, she also careens into clichés, using them in plenty while telling her story. There is the bad boy who spells trouble, the good boy who appears meek but turns out to be a hero, the unglamorous but loyal best friend and the mean but pretty rich girls who exist just so the heroine can make them feel small in the climax.

Gippi (played charmingly by debutante Riya Vij) lives in a hill town with her brother and single mother. She goes from fretting about her weight to being her mother’s sounding board quite effortlessly.

Nair maps her protagonists’ life issues with a healthy dose of humour, but it doesn’t always work. While Gippi’s conversations with her mother are heart-warming as is her rapport with her brother, the teen romance portions fall flat.

Also, Gippi’s epiphany, which comes at the end, is completely out the blue and hard to digest – it’s as if the director realised the film was ending and it had to be inserted hurriedly.

A film about the pains and pleasures of growing up is always welcome, but “Gippi” isn’t as charming and likeable as it could have been.

(Follow Shilpa on Twitter @shilpajay)

To enjoy Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK‘s “Go Goa Gone“, you have to ignore the tacky effects and the bad make-up and concentrate on the wisecracks and repartee between the main characters. Once you’ve done that successfully, get ready to buckle in for what is an unexpectedly fun ride.

One of India’s first zombie films, “Go Goa Gone” relies heavily on excellent dialogue and some great chemistry between the main leads to make a comedy that will leave you laughing for quite a while.

Replete with plenty of cuss words and the kind of snarky conversation you are likely to hear among friends, the zombies seem just a device to move the story forward, rather than the centre of the story, which is a good thing.

Kunal Khemu, Vir Das and Anand Tiwari play Hardik, Luv and Bunny, three friends who go to sun-kissed Goa but find themselves on a remote island infested by zombies. For help, they have to rely on Boris (played by Saif Ali Khan), a half-Indian, half-Russian mafioso with acid blond hair and an equally acid tongue, who has the guns to kill the zombies.

The story is entirely predictable and the production values leave much to be desired, but the witty exchanges between the friends and the overall acting make up for it.

Khan sheds his romantic playboy image to show his penchant for comedy and gets some of the best lines. Tiwari, as the bumbling “friend of the hero” as he calls himself, is immensely likeable and effective. But the real hero of “Go Goa Gone” is Kunal Khemu, who plays the smart-talking, smooth Hardik with panache and is also credited with writing the dialogue for this film.

Expect to have much fun and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Just ignore the Ramsay film extras that walk around as zombies in this film and you are guaranteed a rollicking time at the movies this weekend.

(Follow Shilpa on Twitter @shilpajay)

A five-minute scene, sans dialogue, just before the interval. A shot of a man elated, reliving his magical day as the rest of the world goes about its own business – these five minutes alone make “Bombay Talkies” worth a watch.

Dibakar Banerjee’s segment, based on a Satyajit Ray short story, is evocative, sensitive, subtle and gets to the heart of why cinema brings magic into the most mundane of lives. And his film, dare I say it, is leagues ahead of the other three shorts in this portmanteau film.

Which is not to say the other three films aren’t gripping enough. Karan Johar surprises with his short film, avoiding clichés and extracting some great performances from his cast. Rani Mukerji plays the editor of a gossip magazine, in an arid marriage with her newscaster husband (Randeep Hooda, remarkably restrained). The presence of an intern (Saqib Saleem) in their lives alters it completely and brings to the fore uncomfortable truths.

In Zoya Akhtar’s segment, a little boy who wants to dress up and dance is berated by his tyrannical father, who says boys should be tough and strong. But inspiration comes in the form of Katrina Kaif when she appears fairylike and tells the boy (Naman Jain) to follow his dreams. That off-key note apart, the film is commendable for the last sequence and Jain’s poignant performance.

In Anurag Kashyap‘s film, a star-struck youth makes the journey from Allahabad to Mumbai, hoping for a glimpse of Amitabh Bachchan and a chance to fulfil his dying father’s wish. He stalks Bachchan, waiting outside the actor’s home, Prateeksha, for days but to no avail. Kashyap tries to capture the allure of a big star and his effect on an ordinary man, but ironically, the film slips with the scene where Bachchan appears on screen.

The plus point of “Bombay Talkies” is that there are moments in almost each segment that will stay with you and remind you of the kind of power cinema wields in India. Two of the films capture what star power is, while the others tap into the intangible – the presence of cinema in our lives. It may not always be at the fore, but it plays out, like background music in our real lives.

The segments do tend to romanticise the filmdom industry, preferring not to show us the darker side of things, but perhaps it is fitting, given that this is about the celebration of 100 years of Indian cinema.

Of the cast, Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Purandar stands head and shoulders above the rest – Siddiqui and Banerjee’s short film stay with you long after you have left the theatre. Sadashiv Amrapurkar in a surprise role is also brilliant, as is Saqib Saleem in Johar’s film.

You might tend to forget all this though, if you watch the grating “item song” that someone obviously thought was a bright idea to put in the end credits – it shows you all that is wrong with Indian cinema – too much glamour, no content and the false assurance that this is what it’s all about.

(Follow Shilpa on Twitter @shilpajay)

On Friday, Indian cinema marks 100 years since Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s black-and-white silent film “Raja Harishchandra” (King Harishchandra) held audiences spellbound at its first public screening on May 3, 1913, in Mumbai.

Phalke’s 40-minute film, about a righteous Indian king who never told a lie, was shot mostly at his house with a motley group of actors including his young son.

“He wasn’t an ambitious man, but he was gripped by the immense possibilities of the movies and what they could do,” said film-maker Paresh Mokashi, who chronicled the making of India’s first feature film in a 2009 Marathi-language movie.

“He saw that if done properly, this art would prosper in India.”

Prosper it did. Indian cinema, with its subset of Bollywood for Hindi-language films, is now a billion-dollar industry that makes more than a thousand films a year in several languages.

It is worth 112.4 billion rupees (over $2 billion) and leads the world in terms of films produced and tickets sold.

Phalke, who had been a photographer and worked at a printing press before movie fever gripped him, battled numerous hurdles to make “Raja Harishchandra” barely two decades after the first film commercial exhibitions began in New York using the kinetoscope.

Inspired by the screening in Mumbai of a film on the life of Jesus Christ, Phalke determined to make a movie about Indian heroes, according to Mokashi’s film. He traveled to London to buy a camera, selling much of what he owned to make the trip.

But awaiting him at home were many hurdles, the least of which was convincing an actor to shave off his moustache to portray a woman because the idea of using female actors was unthinkable at the time.

Phalke’s wife Saraswati cooked single-handedly for the 40-odd film unit, holding up white sheets as a screen for hours while her husband filmed “trick scenes”, and stoically bore the sale of their belongings to fund the movie.

While Phalke subsequently went on to make 95 full-length movies and 26 short films in a career that spanned 19 years, the advent of the talkies meant he died in penury since he was unable to adapt to the new technology.

“He never looked at films from the commercial aspect, perhaps that’s why later on in life he was disillusioned,” Phalke’s granddaughter Usha Patankar told Reuters, describing her grandfather as a dapper man who dressed in his best even to just stroll around the neighborhood.

“He only wanted to make films because they fascinated him”.

Phalke died in 1944 at the age of 73 but his name lives on in the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, instituted in his honor by the government in 1969 and which remains the highest and most coveted award in Indian cinema.

Besides Bollywood, which has global appeal, India also has a vibrant regional-language film industry, especially in southern states where film stars are often worshipped in temples specially built for them.

Several events have been planned to mark the centenary of Indian cinema on Friday. The Cannes Film Festival later this month is also celebrating with special India screenings.

But his family feels that Phalke, the man who began it all, didn’t get his due.

“We really felt that he should be given India’s highest civilian honor… but that hasn’t happened,” said Patankar.

“I think he would have been immensely proud to know what he started, if he were alive today”.

(Editing By Tony Tharakan and Elaine Lies)

Banerjee has adapted the story “Patol Babu, Film Star”,
about a middle-aged man getting his moment of fame playing a bit
role in a movie, as part of a Bollywood project by four Indian
directors to show what the movies have meant to them.

“Bombay Talkies” opens in cinemas on Friday, one century
after the first Indian feature film “Raja Harishchandra” held
audiences spellbound in Mumbai and laid the foundation for one
of the world’s largest film industries.

“Bombay Talkies” will also be screened at the Cannes Film
Festival this month and features short films by well-known
directors Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar.

Banerjee, 43, who most recently made the political thriller
“Shanghai”, spoke to Reuters about short films and cinema being
viewed as human history.

Q: How different is making a short film from making a
full-length feature?

A: It’s just a different way. I took a short story written
by Satyajit Ray, a very interesting story and I adapted it. It
is similar and yet different. I have taken the core of the story
and have changed the setting from 1960s Calcutta to 2013 Bombay
and given it new elements and dimensions. The story is also
about a man defining his own success for himself. That remains
the same but the definition has evolved from there. It’s about a
man trying to succeed as a professional and a man trying to
command the respect of his peers.

Q: Is it an emotional film?

A: I haven’t tried to move away from any emotion and I hate
over-sentimentality and over-emphasis on the same things, as if
you are telling the audience to cry or laugh. Having said that,
this is the most emotional film I have made to date. This one
has a very apparent emotional level and it has a conclusion.

Q: Do you mean to say your other films don’t have
conclusions?

A: We really go into films to escape. So a few films like
mine, which don’t give you that crutch to escape, have to
survive on the strength of other things, like a visceral attack
or the way of telling a story which commands your attention, and
respect for the audience’s intelligence, rather than talking
down to them.

Q: What are you focusing on in this film?

A: This film is about the presence of Indian cinema in our
lives. At another level, it is an universal story. You take that
as a means to say something that is bigger and more meaningful.

Q: Has Indian cinema changed over the years?

A: No, it hasn’t changed. Cinema is who we are and cinema is
who we want to be. When you see a Karan Johar romance or an
Aditya Chopra romance, you can see what a young man of 1995 was.
He’s not there in the film but that’s what he wanted to be.
Similarly in the 1970s or the ’40s. Cinema is the history of the
subconscious. When you watch films, you get human history from
the personal point of view.

Q: Are we forgetting regional cinema in this celebration of
Indian cinema? Is it all about Bollywood?

A: If I was a Bengali filmmaker, I would have made it in
Bengali, but I make films in Bollywood. If you go by the sheer
number of people who speak Hindi, then yes, it pretty much
represents a majority of Indian cinema. I would like regional
cinema to prosper and the fact that it hasn’t cannot be the
fault of Hindi cinema. It is the fault of the people who are
making those regional films because you are not being relevant,
you are not reaching enough people.

(Editing by Tony Tharakan and Elaine lies)

On Friday, Indian cinema marks 100 years since Phalke’s black-and-white silent film “Raja Harishchandra” (King Harishchandra) held audiences spellbound at its first public screening on May 3, 1913.

Phalke’s 40-minute film, about a righteous Indian king who never told a lie, was shot mostly at his house with a motley group of actors including his young son.

“He wasn’t an ambitious man, but he was gripped by the immense possibilities of the movies and what they could do,” says film-maker Paresh Mokashi, who chronicled the making of India’s first feature film in a 2009 movie. “He saw that if done properly, this art would prosper in India.”

And prosper it did. Indian cinema, with its subset of Bollywood for Hindi-language films, is now a billion-dollar industry that makes more than a thousand films a year in several languages.

Phalke, who had been a photographer and worked in a printing press before movie fever gripped him, battled several hurdles to make “Raja Harishchandra”, not the least of which was convincing an actor to shave off his moustache to portray a woman, because the idea of using female actors was unthinkable at the time.

Phalke’s wife Saraswati cooked single-handedly for the 40-odd film unit, holding up white sheets as a screen for hours while her husband filmed “trick scenes” and stoically bore the sale of their belongings to fund the movie.

While Phalke, known as the father of Indian cinema, went on to make 95 full-length movies and 26 short films in a career that spanned 19 years, the advent of the talkies meant he died in penury.

“He never looked at films from the commercial aspect, perhaps that’s why later on in life he was disillusioned,” Phalke’s grand-daughter Usha Patankar told Reuters. “He only wanted to make films because they fascinated him,” she said.

He died in 1944, but his name lives on in the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, instituted in his honour by the government in 1969 and which is, until today, the highest award in Indian cinema.

But his family feels Phalke didn’t get his due.

“We really felt that he should be given India’s highest civilian honour – the Bharat Ratna but that hasn’t happened,” says Patankar.

Today, the Indian film industry is worth 112.4 billion rupees (over $2 billion) and leads in terms of films produced and tickets sold. Besides Bollywood, which has global appeal, India also has a vibrant regional-language film industry, especially in southern states where film stars are often worshipped in temples specially built for them.

Several events have been planned to mark the centenary of Indian cinema on Friday. The Cannes Film Festival in May is also celebrating with special India screenings.

“I think he would have been immensely proud to know what he started, if he were alive today,” says Patankar. (Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Tony Tharakan)