STARK, BRUTAL SAGA OF SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL

STARRING: Shilpa Shukla, Shadab Kamal DIRECTOR: Ajay Bahl

Somewhere towards the end of the protagonist Mukesh's descent into a self-created hell, we see him standing shamelessly at the roadside soliciting sex, being picked up by three drunken burly men.

A little later, Shadab Kamal sobs in the bathroom, blood dripping to his feet in a trail of tell-tale brutality.

The implicit violence that underlines this sequence reminded me of a similar process of sexual debasement undertaken by Mark Wahlberg in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. That was a film about the porn industry in the 1970s.

B.A. Pass is set in present day DelhiPaharganj, to be more precise. Bustling with sights, sounds and smells of doom and despair, it is a gripping story of a young financially-challenged man's journey into a world of prostitution. We could say, we have never seen this before. And we would be as close to the truth as this film tries to get.

The taut screenplay by Ritesh Shah never allows room for superfluous moments We follow Mukesh's descent into a life of compromised morality with an absence of condemnation and censure. Mukesh's environment and his circumstances as a displaced orphan are not exploited to generate pathos. No one in this film allows us to feel sorry for the derelict lives. The characters tit into the film's wretched karma with disturbing inevitability, as though everyone we see in this motion picture was pre-ordained to suffer and fade away.

By the time we arrive at the finishing line, we know the protagonist has exhausted all his options. It is the end of the road for the film's achingly young gigolo-protagonist. Hard choices have to be made at this penultimate juncture.

As we watch the ta lented Shadab Kamal lay bare his character's soul, we are suddenly reminded of how far we have come in his 95-minutejourney from innocence and anxiety to despair and doom.

Debutant di rector Ajay Bahl puts forward a little gem of a story which radiates the colours of life's grim and harsh reality. There are so many young dreams dying every day in the metropolises. As one struggler in Bollywood once told me, "I came to Mumbai to kick ass. Instead I ended up licking ass''. appear to have walked out of'l oin' Aj it's den in the 1970s, not quite sure which way to head in the present day milieu of such awe-inspiring gangster epics as Luc Besson's Taken and Amit Kumar's Monsoon Shootout.

To envision the withering away of innocent aspirations in the merciless light of reality w ithout a shred of self-pitying melodrama is not an easy task. Bahl does it with great confidence and sensitivity.

That he has personally done the film's cinematography is such a beautiful circumstance for the fi l m. I doubt another cameraman could capture those places in these troubled characters' lives that Bahl captures with such force and vitality.

A part of the film's riveting charm originates from the authentic faces that populate Bahl's nation of damnation. These are real people living out of authentic homes that exist beyond the director's domain of'action' and 'cut'.

Except for a train robbery sequence featuring lmran Khan at the start, it has too little to offer in the way action and adventure.

And rea lly, what this film has done to the Mohd Rafi Qawwalli Tayyab ali pyar ka dushman would make Manmohan Desai wince if he was alive.

Dobaara done. Please, no third helping.

B.APass is a stark and brutal saga of seduction and betrayal. It is that unusual work of cinema which explores the darkest depths of the human consciousness without losing sight of the light that underscores life.

It would be erroneous to treat this film as on ly a serious noire effort. It is that, yes. But it's also a film that makes an impact in unexpectedly blithe ways, creeping up into our conscience when we least expect an intrusion and lodging itself cosily in a corner.

SU BHASH K JHA