Woodstock Villa

By Subhash K JhaStarring Sikandar Kher, Neha Uberoi, Arbaaz Khan, Gulshan GroverDirected by Hansal MehtaRating: ** ½One thing is for sure. The image of the leading lady in our cinema has changed beyond recognition.Barely months after watching Bipasha Bsau sleep her way to the Big O (opulence, not what you think) in Race, and weeks after Kareena Kapoor in Tashan showed us it's okay for nice small-town girl to covet that big villa in Vermont, we now have the ultra-confident semi-debutante Neha Uberoi (she has done a bit part in Dus Kahaniyan) who walks away from the mess she partly creates with a bagful of money.No she doesn't get away with it. And that's not because the screenwriters got cold feet in drawing that svelte line between Sati Savitri and Slutty Savitri.But only because the 'hero' (if we may call the glib-tongued amoral dude from 'drown'-under a hero) turns out to be smarter shrewder and more ruthless than the lady who doesn't believe in glancing backwards.Woodstock Villa isn't a great work of art. It doesn't aspire to be. Its affectations in visuals, treatment, background score and characterization are so nakedly unsheathed and freed of the elements of realism that the posturing becomes a form of artlessness. The films has a specific look and style. Granite walls, rusted floors,screaming desires and smothered conscience…what would a Sanjay Gupta production be without these?Vikash Nowlakha Anshum's cinematography and Wasiq Khans's art design bring a sense of imminent peril into the plot. As though the characters were framed against a wall that separates humanity from doom.Hansal Mehta's films specially that underrated ode to Chinese actioners Chhal have always been created on the editing table. Bunty Negi cuts the material down to a stark minimum. The people who populate Woodstock Villa are crowded not by a supporting cast but their inner worlds which simmer to the surface in swirls of indignation. I specially loved the pre-titled ten minutes when Arbaaz Khan with his bagful of ransom money is tracked down by his wife's kidnapper.There's something about Mumbai under siege. Mehta holds the suspense at an arms (and ammunitions) distance. An inherently violent film, Woodstock Villa doesn't have too much blood spilling on the expensive wooden floors. The ambience reeks of unchecked affluence where a wife takes off with a man who almost rapes her before he dumps her body in ravine where the slush and silence seem borrowed from Vikram Bhatt's Raaz. The two newcomers execute their immoral unscrupulous distraught parts with a confidence that imparts an edge of erotica to the relentless action. Arbaaz Khan has one really difficult sequence where he has to break down at the end and bawl like a baby on the floor. Meena Kumari in Guru Dutt's Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam had fallen to the floor with an anguished cry because her husband leaves her.Arbaaz's screen wife and his mistress have left him at the end. He's the loser in this tightly-knitted game of cat and mouse.And the 'hero' flies off with money that he didn't earn.Gee, what a wonderful world we've gifted to the coming generations.