Two hours before scenes from Jazbaa is shown at Cannes, anticipation is so high that the event is trending on Twitter; it's in eighth position worldwide, and in the top spot in India. Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the film's star, leads a cast that boasts some of Bollywood's biggest names – Irrfan Khan, Shabana Azmi and Jackie Shroff.
The security at the event is so tight that everyone is required to put away cameras and phones – this will be the only time the scenes will be shown before the film is released.
Director Sanjay Gupta, best known for his genre films, stands up to begin the presentation of the footage. First, he sets the scene: “Aishwarya plays a lawyer and a single mother, and her 8-year-old daughter gets kidnapped. The kidnapper wants her to fight a case that is impossible to win. On the second day she gets a call from the kidnapper saying that her daughter has suffered an allergic reaction from something that she ate and she needs medication. The mother says take her to the hospital and he replies, ‘how can I take a hostage to the hospital’? She has to take the medicine to him before it gets too late, so this footage starts from her delivering medicine.”
There are two television screens next to each other on the wall of the yacht. It’s deafeningly loud and the boat is rocking under the weight of the people.
The footage, which about seven minutes long, shows Aishwarya driving a car in a panic, then calling the kidnappers wondering where she should deliver the bag of medicine. We see a German shepherd barking. Rai has to leave the medicine by the dog, whose barks get frantic as she nears. She puts the bag down, then sees a car with her daughter in it. She screams but the car speeds away. The tension doesn’t let up when she is back in her own car. From nowhere pops up Irrfan, rumoured to be playing a cop suspended from service. He’s furious that she didn’t contact him before going to meet the kidnappers. As they talk the tension mounts.
Jazbaa, which was made on a budget of US$6 million, took eight months to write and started shooting in February. Nearly two-thirds of the film has been shot already and the film will be released on October 8 in the UAE and October 9 in India.
artslife@thenational.ae
