Mastram turns out to be much too banal. The re-creation of an era which could have lent the film some heft, is wholly missing from the story.

While the story looks and feels realistic enough, as a viewer, we were intrigued to see and learn more about the elusive Mastram and hoping to find a flamboyant (even if in his own imagination) character. Jaiswal’s Rajaram/Mastram is too…normal — sometimes even bland. As it is an ‘imagined biography’ of the writer, we were left with the nagging thought that the writer of ‘Mastram’ had not made him as intriguing, mysterious and naughty as one might have hoped.

There are so many ideas here about writing, sexual desire, fantasy, hypocrisy, the artist in the marketplace but they remain unexplored. Mastram is an opportunity lost.

Director Jaiswal, who wrote Gangs of Wasseypur, seems unable to make up his mind as to how to firmly hold the narrative.

The result then is a film that fails to make you feel good.

Mastram brings out the Indian thinking process in its most unadulterated form, by introducing a character who would rather be a flop writer telling domesticated stories over being a successful writer writing erotica. It is not his dual life, stuck between divine and profane that forms the focus but the story’s inherent ability to convey so simply India’s most lamentable and gruesome mentality of turning a deaf ear towards: Sex. This is not for the prurient. Others must not miss it.

Mastram is strictly a story of an individual rather than a reflection of the process of soft core books. And even as a story of an individual it doesn’t score too many points.

The stories in those Mastram books knew exactly what they wanted to say, the same cannot be said of Mastram the film.

Mastram might not be a perfect film but can be termed as a bold attempt nevertheless. The overall impression is that of getting a ‘U’ experience in an ‘A’ certified film. You wait and wait for the money shot which never comes…

Mastram is for all who are open to logic and understanding of issues. Mastram presents the common Indian man who desires the worldly pleasures of life but finds it derogatory to express it in public.

There are only moments of the frisson that characterises humankind’s fascination with the verboten, conveyed more through Mastram’s language than the visuals of open-mouthed women waiting to spill out of their clothes at the slightest provocation.