Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

What can I say about Saawariya without sounding like a crusty curmudgeon of a critic? Very little, I'm afraid: Sanjay Leela Bhansali hasn't left us with an option.

The overhang of Black is still so firmly in place that the whole imaginary town of the director's latest fantasy (hard to call it a film) has a similar palette — it’s all black, blue, more black, with some stray threads of red. A few minutes into the film, you start longing for a ray of natural light.

Everything feels hemmed in, and claustrophobic — even the two debutants, Ranbir and Sonam, who are already more famous than their famous star parents (Rishi and Neetu, and Anil, respectively) even before their first release.

The mop-haired guitar-slinging Raj comes from nowhere into this town , which looks like a Venice of the Orient. It has bridges and gondolas and tawdry ladies of the night, of which Rani — raat ko jhootha pyar bechne wali complete with pink cheeks and crimson lipstick — is the prime mover.

Raj sees Sakina, voluminous ghaghra, waist-length curls, and an umbrella, and is lost. But Sakina loves another (Salman). So you wait for something to happen: between Raj and Sakina, between Raj and Rani, between Raj and Zohra, his landlady whom he has won over with a hug, and a tug at the heartstrings.

Nothing tugs at ours. The screenplay is static: nothing moves. It's all like a series of still-life paintings, exquisite, yes, but with no pulsating heartbeats. Sonam displays more screen presence than Ranbir, who's been made into a jerky marionette, when he is not doing a near-naked jig in a towel: he deserved better.

What could Bhansali be thinking of? Saawariya is an act of supreme self-indulgence. Dunno if Dostoevsky, whose short story White Nights the movie is based on, would recognise this version. And dunno what Sony Pictures were doing, backing this as their first Indian production.