I finally found the missing link.  

While  almost all of AB 2.0’s recent work is pretty solid (other than  his sleepwalk in last year’s  Sarkar), after having seen  Refugee and Kuch Naa Kaho I didn’t really want to see more  of the early movies from  his filmography, though  I had wondered how he got from the somewhat stiff and gangly  boyish figure  he was then to the smouldering, fleshy man  he has become since playing Lallan in Yuva.

And then I watched Ram Gopal Varma’s  Naach, released in 2004, the same year as Mani Ratnam’s opus.   You can almost see Abhi  shedding  the skin to reveal Lallan.  

Naach tells the story of Reva (Antra Mali), an impoverished – yet principled –  dancer and choreographer,  living in a beautifully decorated Bombay apartment with a rooftop open-air dance studio all to herself.   We meet her as she struggles to get work, being passed over by directors who admit to her that they have to go with other, better known and uninspired choreographers who have connections and the faith of the investors.   Reva meets Abhinav after they’ve both come from the same office and their respective tryouts.   He needs to learn to dance to make it as an actor and asks her to teach him.

Now, I’m better with a pen or a keyboard than on the floorboards, but I couldn’t help but wonder, why does a guy trying to break into Bollywood movies go to a modern dancer for lessons?   Wouldn’t he better served going to someone who teaches the balle balle here-I-am-at-the-engagement-party  kind of dance instead?

But ok, it’s a plot twist central to the story, so I’ll play along.   Abhi convinces Reva to teach him and soon he’s up on the roof with her doing similar contortions and poses to the ones that she does (except he only wears an anklet at one point, while the sexy and daring Antra – later to become Antara – has a small Om tatoo on her right shoulder and a pierced navel).   Even to my amateur eyes, I have to remark that every time we see Reva dancing, there is no flow to what she does at all, rather she’ll crouch down, lift one limb this way or that, arc her arms and hands around her face and pose.   That said, I was impressed by Antra Mali’s incredible physical condition, and according to an old Rediff article, she has a history of dance dating back to way before taking on this role.

After some  lessons, the two start to become friends.   After a day and night hanging out together, as they shelter from a rainstorm, Abhi declares “I love you” and catalogues a list  of what he loves about Reva.   Had it been better written, the dialogue  could have been touching or funny or realistic or all of the above, but in this  film it just sounds hollow and stilted.   The thing is though, it seems unbelievable that the two have feelings for each other.   Antra always looks distant and slightly miffed, and AB 2.0 looks like my ex- used to when he’d pose in front of the mirror, just someone pretending to be doing a modeling shoot, as opposed to inhabiting the skin of a character.   In spite of the gorgeous bodies of both actors, there is also not even a frisson of excitement when the two are together.   It’s as if they were both in their own invisible, hermetically sealed compartments.

Abhinav’s career takes off and soon he’s rolling in money and fame, both which he’s told Reva more than once he wants very much.   Next up, the predictable difficulties between the two as  a result.   After a huge fight where Abhi tells Reva to get off her high, condescending  horse, they break up.  

Reva meets Diwarkar (Ritesh Deshmukh), who produces music videos, and who wants her to choreograph his next.   She agrees and he is soon smitten with Reva, though she’s oblivious.   Her persuades her to be the lead dancer in the video and soon both of them are garnering raves and are all over TV.

After Bluffmaster was released Abhishek often commented, jokingly, that Ritesh was a fool to appear in the Ek Main Aur Ek Tu music video with that Don King hairdo that he sported, but I must say that while his hair is ok in Naach,  Ritesh’s facial hair, or rather, the patchiness thereof, is awful.   He has a moustache, a soul patch (thank God they’re on their way out!), and this archipelago of tufts of fluff that are supposed to comprise a beard.   Then, the costume people stick him in  some   silly headgear (including a knitted wool cap, ugh, in Bombay??).

Diwarkar next wants to do a musical and both he and Reva realize that the best person for the male lead is (guess who?), Abhi!   He agrees, though it seems like his main purpose in this endeavor is to lift or hold Reva.

Diwarkar wears proto-Daniel Liebeskind specs (so we know he’s a serious artiste like Reva), and he gets his actors to wear a variety of questionable outfits in his musical.  

Abhishek may not have shaved his head  for Yuva, but he did wear this headwrap in Naach, forever memorialized on celluloid:

Antra doesn’t get off entirely scot free either.   The costume people thought that the one knee-high look for  the outfit she wore while dancing on the beach was good enough to repeat:

 

In some of the many musical numbers filmed on the beach, Antra looks stunning, and vaguely reminiscent of JLo, though every so often, some of the clothes call to mind old Duran Duran videos:

One thing that is quite remarkable is that for a film about dance, the music is largely clumsy and unremarkable.   The only two songs that had any life to them at all are Ishq da Tadka and Berang Zindagi.  

As I watched this film I thought to myself “They’re trying to do something here, but what?”   Fair play to RGV, there are some creative and different shots and the sets and lighting feel more real than some Hindi movies, but he’s  more in his element when portraying the  underworld environment of Company and Sarkar.   And I had to laugh when one of the producers, viewing his own schloky work says that famous line right out of Company: “It’s bad, but it’s business.”   How many directors quote their own lines?

See it or skip it?

Pass on  this one.   I give it points for trying something different, but with disappointing, bloodless  results.   This movie  is really only for people who are diehard fans of RGV or any of the three actors in this movie.