Bulandi begins auspiciously - slow motion shots of a striding Dada Thakur - striding purposefully towards his destiny with a background chorus of angels straining away, desperately trying to prove a point.

Clearly Dada Thakur is a very special man, but at the same time let's not forget his wife who is no less than the perfection of womanhood - ravishingly beautiful, self sacrificing and most importantly, utterly servile matron saint of womanhood. It's taken for granted that she cooks and sings flawlessly as well, as if it could be any other way.

This saint, blissful in her slavery is played by seasoned veteran Rekha. Anil Kapoor plays Dada Thakur, her devoted husband and the towns saintly lord, miraculously maintaining a strait face while delivering some truly mind-altering dialogues of recent times. The film's plot is too convoluted and totally defies description. Suffice to say it is the most morally twisted and ideologically deranged film in ages.

Rekha, the perfect wife, is actually more like an unpaid nurse who provides cups of "prasad", tea and water on cue - always dressed to kill. The films message is delivered with the subtlety of a motorized sledgehammer. It spells out very clearly that every one in the "perfect society" has their specific position and role, and that the perfect society is one in which every one accepts their assigned role. The moment that anyone aspires to a better or different way the very fabric on which society is based begins to horribly disintegrate. Clearly there is no room for deviancy or any form of alternate viewpoint in Bulandi's perfect world.

This preordained "Social Order" applies to the home as where each and every individual has a predestined role to fulfill if all is to proceed as it should in an "ideal" community. The "Order" also applies to society at large with each lowly peasant obliged to feel utterly thrilled at his miserable lot. By aspiring to or striving for anything better he would be upsetting the stability of society's apple cart and endangering the Social Order.

Okay, there is hardly any point in reading into the morality and motivations behind this plodding South Indian phantasmagoria - one ought to just take it at face value. Yet it is fascinating to think about the evolution of the kind of mindsets that create this kind of warped fantasy. However just when you though proceedings had wound down to the utterly predictably climax, the director stuns the audience with a true shocker of a scene, the likes of which even John Waters, the renowned Prince of Puke, would be seriously enviable of.

During the films insanely ridiculous climax fight-cum-childbirth scene, Rekha, acting as midwife, receives a splash of some mysterious liquid on her face which seems to satisfy her enormously. Just keep in mind that there wasn't a bucket or faucet in sight. You decide what that muck was supposed to be. Do keep a barf-bag handy though - enough said.