Tortured souls seek sensual salvation

ine years after Jism gave us a new kind of heroine in Bipasha Basu who emerged with erotic insouciance out of the water and headed straight for the hip region, Jism 2 gives us a strangely inhibited porn-star heroine.

for those expecting a sex romp with the queen of adult content, Jism 2 is a bit of a damper. There are three welloiled bodies, two male and one female, caught in the throes of an anguished do-or-die passion that can only burn itself out. But sex is really not the solution for these wounded characters.

director Pooja Bhatt aims to take her characters beyond their bodies. These are seriously flawed people not afraid to scream out their outrage when life deals them a particularly unfair blow.

But then, there we have it. Who said life was only about fair deals and perfect bodies? The outer world of Pooja’s people is a Sri Lankan paradise lit up with toasted beaches and enticing holiday resorts where time stops still. But secreted in this idyllic setting are deep wounds of anger, resentment and protest, all accumulated from years of unexpressed hurt.

Izna announces at the outset she is a porn star, not unlike the actress who plays her. She wears the perfect clothes, travels business class and sleeps only with the poshest men. She is now on to her riskiest client, a high-end terrorist Kabir, played with an enigmatic wackiness by Randeep hooda, whom the Indian government, represented strangely by only two officers Arunodoy Singh and his senior Arif Zakaria, wants dead or alive.

As luck would have it, Izna was once in love with Kabir. Now she must pretend to be in love with him again. Perhaps because ms Leone is new to dramatic acting, we never quite understand how Izna feels about rekindling old passions with the man who once loved her and then left her.

Is she still in love with him while pretending to be seducing him? does she take up the dangerous job in the subconscious hope of teaming up with him for life? And when Kabir finally tells her a deep damning secret about the people she’s working for she reacts so foolishly that we can only say working with the body numbs the mind.

Just how much the confusion and inner chaos projected by Izna is actually Sunny Leone’s is hard to tell. But like Sonam Kapoor in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya, we often feel the character’s confusions to be suspiciously close to the actress’ own inability to grasp the complexities of her character. finally the film belongs to Randeep hooda. As an assassin on the brink who recites Ghalib

On the plus side, ms Leone often looks surprisingly vulnerable and wounded on camera. She has a terrific pair of legs which she generally keeps crossed. The bust is expressive too, yes. But she manages to keep us interested in more than her physical assets.

Arunoday Singh as the man who leads Leone into the lion’s den (so to speak) plays a role akin to Abhishek Bachchan’s in Dhoom 2. But a lot more angstridden. he’s a man who falls in love with the honeytrap. Singh is not fully able to express the character’s emotional turmoil. he is far more in control doing action scenes.