Kalpana Lajmi is a director who tries to be different, who tries to make films with strong female protagonists or issues to do with women. I have not seen much of her work having missed Darmiyaan and having seen only half of Rudaali. But memories do go back to the Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah starrer Ek Pal, a film dealing with an extra marital affair with vibrant colours, great music and some inspired performances. However, although a brave attempt and certainly thought provoking, the film was not a complete success, either artistically or commercially.

Kalpana Lajmi embarks on a new theme this time and her poster shouts out that it is a film on marital rape. Great that someone should attempt to deal with an issue as sensitive and important as this but whether it is that expectations were sky high or whether one genuinely believed that this could possibly be a realistic discourse on marital rape, this film is a horrible disappointment in all respects. Durga (Raveena Tandon) is a village girl, uneducated, beautiful and married off to the seemingly demented and cruel Sanjoy (Sayaji Shinde). This match is put together by his mother in the hope that her wayward and despotic son may find some peace and settle down to a stable existence.

There is no indication that he may even possibly want to do that as he comes thundering in on the eve of his marriage, breaking furniture, flinging ornaments around the house and only settles down under the threat of being left out of his parents' will should he not marry. He leaves his bride on their wedding night and goes off to a prostitute while poor Durga falls in floods of tears into the warm arms of her brother in law Sunil (Sanjay Suri). One year passes although we do not see much of it and we learn that in that one year, the beastly Sanjoy has not consummated his marriage. Durga asks pathetically what she may have done wrong and why he needs to go to "other women" at which point, while painting his wife's face in the vision of the goddess Durga, he ostensibly rapes her. Can this be rape when the wife is consenting albeit possibly not to the brute force that he uses and the violence that accompanies it? So one presumes that she did not consent to it but the scene is so badly cut that one does not know for sure. Still, Durga is seen running from the house and falling in front of a police car, uttering that she has been raped by her husband.

The next day, she refuses to say anything. There are huge gaps in the narrative and the next we hear is that Sanjoy has gone to Calcutta and Durga is on her own. The only emotional comfort she gets is from Sunil who is obviously attracted to her and is kind and caring. Sanjoy arrives back to a party being given to celebrate the birth of their child which he knows nothing of and so one presumes that he has been away for more than 6 months. On finding out that the child is a girl, he denounces it and that's that. We then jerk forward again to when the child is 12 years old and the evil father threatening to marry her off. Mother and child decide to escape and that is how the film opens, the rest of the film being told in a series of flashbacks.

Rape is horrific crime, in any circumstance. Until recently, rape within marriage was not recognised, even in the UK law, and it was considered that it was Man's divine right to be able to have sex whenever he wanted, by force or otherwise. It is a fact that marital rape is prevalent in our part of the world, not least because the woman does not feel she has the right to refuse. So when she does not know that she has such a right, then she cannot even know that rape is taking place. The law in England now recognises the right to say "no" but it is certainly something that is thought of as a man's right in our part of the world. Women are expected to serve, not defy their man and if there is "daman" of any kind, to suffer it silently for what will society say. Appalling, but a fact of life. But does Kalpana Lajmi actually deal with this issue? Not at all. In fact she has made a complete mess of a movie with a dreadful script.

If you strip it of its so called veneer of "serious cinema", is not much different from many revenge female dramas of the 80s, not quite as awful as zakhmi aurat but not much better. In fact, Ghar, a film of the early 80s, set in a commercial framework and dealing with a gang rape, was a more effective piece than this effort. The issue of rape comes up on only one occasion. Oh yes, we know that Sanjoy is cruel and a somewhat demented fellow but as we are told, in the first year, he does not even touch his wife, so apart from his obvious cruelty, rape certainly does not feature as an issue. When it finally happens, it seems that it was simply on the one occasion and then Sanjoy goes off to Calcutta. A child is born and we are never shown any other occasion when this poor tortured wife is being subjected to rape. So it is misleading to say that this is a film on marital rape. For Lajmi to claim to have shown or dealt with this issue is a tall order and I am astounded that she can even lay claim to the fact that she has opened up a vista not previously shown on the Indian screen.

She fails also in her principal characters. The character of Sanjoy is a cruel, almost demented and one dimensional character. There is no possibility that this man can be seen as a humane or even normal person. By making him this black of black characters, are you not in fact diluting the thrust of your film…that marital rape exists and does so even with so called normal and decent people. Do they have to be cruel and OTT to qualify as being the kind who does this sort of thing. Who is going to identify with a man like that? And wont we all just dismiss him as the villain and villains are expected to be cruel. There is not a moment where one may actually look at this character and think that there is anything to him. Durga is also a passive and weak character. By escaping the clutches of her husband but then subsequently doing nothing else, she proves nothing. She merely escapes a situation, does nothing which would be considered as an example, even though asked to do so. Her final surge is laughably predictable.

Much has been made of the fact of Raveena Tandon's national award. There has been such a hullabaloo about this whole thing that I felt bad for Raveena, not being given her share of credit. Well, having seen the film, I have to say that I find it difficult to imagine that a performance of this calibre could merit the national award. Oh, Raveena does fine but she simply is not an instinctive or inspired actress. We have a lot of the pained looks whilst we lapse into the past and a great deal of snivelling but it's all rather filmy. You never feel that this is all very real. You simply cannot compare this performance to that of Tabu in Astitva, who was phenomenal and it is an absolute travesty that she did not win the national award.

Sayaje Shinde is completely over the top and cannot do anything with his character. Sanjay Suri is very natural when he is around but his abrupt departure had me wondering whether I had entered the realms of the utterly ridiculous. Riya sen is wooden and Shaan is appalling. Their bits in the film are completely unnecessary and utterly dull. Lajmi's direction is worse than shoddy. She claims never to have made a shoddy film but this is just a dreadful mess. She uses flashbacks but instead of highlighting the tension in the film, they dilute whatever little impact that she may have been able to make. And there is no logic to her use of such a narrative. This is a gargantuan waste of a topic which really should have been explored with a little bit more intelligence.