Barkhaa

Maybe the intention of the film was to tell us that ladies who dance for a living also have the right to respectability, which is wonderful, but a mothballed plot and an even more mothballed treatment isn't the way forward.

Barkhaa rains down a rhapsody of drama and romance. A heartwarming at times touching tale of an innocent girl's journey into the world of deceit, compromise and corruption, it echoes Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili and Kamal Anrohi'sPakeezah in the way the respectable genteel upper class is shown to exploit women of meager means. Sara Loren is no Meena Kumari. But she kills the part much better than Mandakiniin Raj Kapoor's fevered fable.

The film looks good, is short on runtime and harbors on old-fashioned hysterics. Likeable but not exactly enjoyable!

The only saving grace of the film is its cinematography (Mujahid Raza). The film could have come across as a decent affair if its editing (Mayuresh Sawant) was at least average. On the whole, BARKHAA can be avoided as it offers nothing new.

...barring cinematography and music, other aspects of the film are way too mediocre and cliched for your liking. Sadly it's 2015 and this formulaic drama has nothing new to offer.

Invariably, Hindi cinema's depiction of bar dancers is straightforward: trash-talking roadies by night, virginal white-salwaar angels by day. There is such a vast difference between these two avatars that it becomes more difficult to digest than Puneet Issar playing a respected lawyer.