Bips plays Amisha in Raaz 3

She plays the character of a jealous actor in the film

 In Vikram Bhatt’s Raaz 3, Bipasha Basu plays a frustrated, jealous actress. The role is, apparently, inspired from none other than his ex-lover Amisha Patel.

Says Vikram, “Well, all I can say is, all art is finally cannibalised from one’s personal experiences. When I was with Amisha, both of us were going through a career low. I’ve seen how failure affects people.”

Vikram’s mentor Mahesh Bhatt, who is the producer of Raaz 3, admits to the similarity. “Vikram shared details of his tumultuous relationship with this Amisha.

Insecurities are an integral part of an actress’ life, as her shelf life is limited. We built on that idea to create Bipasha’s character in Raaz 3.” When asked whether the actress in Vikram’s life is Amisha, he replied in the affirmative. “We took the basic idea of the insecurities that creep up on an actress after a few years in the business, and then we built on her desperation. The film shows the character urging her director (Emraan Hashmi) into wrongdoings. In her desperation to cling to her stardom she begins to workship a satan and practices black magic on her younger rival.”

Do for die for Bips

Mahesh Bhatt says Bipasha in her own career has reached a do-or-die stage. “Younger girls have come into the industry and she has suffered a broken heart recently. Given the circumstances, she will either sink like a rock or fly like a bird.”

When we asked Amisha about her life being used to develop a character, she says, “Everyone is entitled to an opinion. I do not want to comment. I’ve too much on my plate with my own productions and the films that I’ve signed outside my production house. I would rather focus on them.”

By Midday

Movie Review : Hate Story (Erotica/Thriller)

Cast: Paoli Dam, Gulshan Devaiah, Nikhil Dwivedi
Director: Vivek Agnihotri

Meet the newest avatar of Maa Kali! The fascist avenging woman has always been a favourite figure of fantasy fashioning for our films. Who can forget Nargis gunning down her own son in Mehboob Khan's Mother India?

The motivations for revenge in Hate Story are not quite the ones that impelled the woman protagonist to rise up in arms in Mother India or for that matter in Bhavna, a film directed by Hate Story producer Vikram Bhatt's father Pravin Bhatt, where Shabana Azmi killed her own husband.

Really, who needs a gun to get even when you have sex?

Paoli doesn't give a damn if her bare back or flesh flash across the screen. She displays a healthy attitude of disdain for the camera, letting it swoop down on her vulture style, never allowing her vengeful character's erotic journey to get sleazy, cheesy or lurid. The camera violates her character's privacy with her consent.

Hate Story is a tale that invites provocative measures of counter-argument. When the protagonist Kaavya (Paoli Dam) gets down to revenge, she spares no one, least of all herself. She announces she wants to be a sex worker, and thereafter, there's no looking back.

And quite a comely back it is.

Paoli's Kaavya uses her physique to lure her enemy into her trap. Director Vivek Agnihotri cuts into her journey of self-destructive vendetta like a knife.

The episodes sometimes stretch the limits of belief. But what the heck! No one is making a statement here on the politically correct conduct of the Indian woman.

In what can be regarded as one of the most defiantly unconventional debut performances, Paoli lets herself go with the furious flow of her character's vendetta.

The episodes hammer into one another with scarce room to breathe. The pace is dizzy most of the way. And when it slows down, you feel the protagonist's vendetta is losing its steam.

Steamy lovemaking scenes are strewn across the narrative's stricken landscape. The soundtrack suggests there's an urgent tragedy nudging the erotic content. The dialogues by Rohit Malhotra don't shy away from telling it like it is.

Vikram Bhatt's screenplay is Sidney Sheldon territory. It doesn't shy away from showing the heroine in an unflattering light. This is new-age cinema with no room for conventional narrative devices or apologies for what the protagonist sets out to do.

If in The Dirty Picture, Vidya Balan wore her sexuality on her sleeve, in Hate Story, Paoli uses her sexuality like a favoured currency in the stock market.

Mint-fresh and shock-proof, Paoli interprets her character with vigorous conviction. As her adversary Gulshan Devaiah (so watchable in Shaitan and That Girl In Yellow Boots) careens between rage and anguish quite effortlessly.

Hate Story is not quite the tale of the simpering wronged woman we've been seeing in our films since the time Adam impregnated Eve.

Hate Story pushes the envelope so hard, all the contents spill out in a torrential tumble of tantalising power-play set within the world of corporate battles and gender conflicts.

This is a most riveting and aesthetic saga of a woman's revenge against the man who's wronged her since RK Nayyar's Inteqaam - except for the fact that Paoli does things Sadhana in Nayyar's film could have never imagined.

By IANS