After good reviews, '7 Khoon Maaf' earns Rs.28 crore

Vishal Bhardwaj's films may not be money spinners, but they are high on content as is his Priyanka Chopra starrer "7 Khoon Maaf" that has a different story to tell. The film has not only garnered good reviews but has so far earned Rs.28 crore from its opening week box office collections and satellite and other rights.

The dark thriller about an incorrigible serial spouse-killer cost Rs.22 crore, which includes the money spent on publicity and advertising.

Released with 786 prints, its opening weekend collection was Rs.13 crore. Overseas collections accounted for Rs.2 crore, the music and satellite rights fetched Rs.11 crore and home video and other sources brought in Rs.2 crore.

"'7 Khoon Maaf' has worked well for us commercially due to a combination of tight production budgeting, optimised spending on prints and publicity and a pre-sales strategy that helped us to de-risk the film via sales of home video, music, satellite and theatrical rights even before the release," Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, Motion Pictures UTV, told IANS.

"7 Khoon Maaf" is based on Ruskin Bond's 'Susanne's Seven Husbands' and tracks the story of a beautiful young girl, Susanna Anna-Marie Johannes (Priyanka), who ends up tying the knot seven times following the untimely and mysterious deaths of her hapless husbands. In the film, Priyanka's character ages from 20 to 65 years.

"The response to the film was good at the weekend with 78 percent occupancy, although it dropped to 40 percent on Monday," said Amit Awasthi, senior manager (Programming and Operations) Spice Cinemas.

"The first half of the film is interesting but in the second half it becomes slow. Priyanka's acting is being really appreciated by one and all," he added.

The film has garnered good reviews and critics are raving about Bhardwaj's directorial skills and Priyanka's acting prowess.

One reviewer wrote: "Bhardwaj's reveals himself yet again as that rare Renaissance man in an art form that deserves more." Another said: "This is Bhardwaj's most fluidly-narrated film to date."

Appreciating Priyanka's work, one critic said: "Priyanka, not for the first time, proves she is leagues ahead of all competition." Another wrote: "For Priyanka Chopra, who plays the Anglo-Indian protagonist, this is unquestionably a role of a lifetime. She has you by the eyeballs."

Yogesh Raizada, corporate head (Cinemas) of Wave Cinemas said every actor in the film had given of their best.

"Priyanka is excellent in the film, Irrfan Khan and Annu Kapoor are known for their acting prowess, John (Abraham) has right stature in the film. All in all, everyone has acted well in the film. Since it's a dark film, family audiences are lower. The occupancy was 60-70 percent over the weekend," he said.

Ritika Sharma, a media professional, was all praise for Priyanka's acting.

"Although the film is a bit slow, Priyanka Chopra takes the cake. She is superb in the film," she said.

Said Ankita Malhotra, who works with a telecom company: "Priyanka carries the film on her shoulders."

Multiplex audiences are appreciating the film, but single screen audiences are not showing much enthusiasm.

"Multiplex audiences are liking the film but the single screen audiences are just average, mainly because family audiences are lower. With comedy film 'Tanu Weds Manu' releasing Friday, the film is definitely going to take a hit," said a source from PVR.

7 Khoon Maaf Review, 7 Khoon Maaf Movie Review, Review of 7 Khoon Maaf

'Once that you've decided on a killing,' sang Sting [ Images ] back in 1983, 'first you make a stone of your heart. And if you find that your hands are still willing, then you can turn a murder into art.'

Tragically, Priyanka Chopra [ Images ] is the kind of actress that painstakingly -- and painfully -- tries to spell out just how stony her heart is, something far better conveyed through deed rather than affected mannerism.

Eyes well up with hurt, thick lips quiver in pouty indignation, and subtlety is thrown to the hounds as the actress flounders, trapped inside a bewildering character significantly out of her league.

And while The Police song might have gone on about a slaughtering spree as easy as ABC, Vishal Bhardwaj [ Images ] takes it far too literally and gives us a film so linear, so simplistic in narrative, that it never quite manages to arouse interest. 7 Khoon Maaf may well be about a demented deity with a fetish for husband-killing, but -- incredible as it may seem -- it is a strikingly boring film.

More than that, in fact, this is a cute film. A very adult story told puzzlingly like a children's fable, this Ruskin Bond adaptation never quite shakes off the artificial affectedness and comes across only as a silly film masquerading as a smarter, cooler, deeper one. Its lines mostly overwritten with both cloying mawkishness as well as childish over-exposition, 7 Khoon Maaf is often just being precious -- while not really worth all that much.

It starts off promisingly enough, an investigation tray being wheeled into a government forensics lab -- the kind of place Bollywood never shows us. An expert opens up the box, looks at pictures of a presumably dead Priyanka, and a tear rolls down his cheek. Most of the rest of the film is photo-album driven flashback, involving him telling her story to his shrill, curious wife.

We see a young Priyanka Chopra at her father's funeral, and then are exposed, one-by-one, to a procession of her many fatally flawed grooms. A two-timing Trotskyite, a poetic pervert, an antiquated apothecary, a foolish officer, and a couple of men who can't act. The wedding-fetishist disposes of them all with consummate ease, while the master filmmaker loyally -- and unimaginatively -- serialises her process.

Bhardwaj's cinema has always been one of quirk and energy, the director whimsically bending the narrative and soaking it in such style that it's impossible to look away. This time, however, he seems content to let the film do the talking while he merely watches... there is no panache, no audacity, no trademark flourish. There is just an immaculate song set in Kashmir [ Images ], and a fabulous one with Russian roots that deserved a better film around it.

There are inevitably a few very clever moments in the film -- a scene involving a white cat in the snow, for example, or that marvelous last line about broken spectacles -- but the characters populating the proceedings are much too exaggerated.

A muted dwarf as if from a Sherlock Holmes adventure; a tender writer with a violent sexual fetish; a Russian man of mystery who quotes Amitabh Bachchan [ Images ]... Bhardwaj's traditionally wonderful dialogue is more basic and less smart this time around, and resultantly the characters emerge considerably contrived and theatrically overdone.

It may be argued, of course, that the maker's intent was to create a macabre opera. Yet this is a highly irregular product, often flip-flopping the line between melodrama and dark comedy, not quite achieving either. And what opera could work if you cared not for its players?

Priyanka tries her best, but is simply not a good enough actress to justify being in a role this nuanced and demanding. It is a fantastic character, one deserving of a Sofia Loren or a Penelope Cruz [ Images ] or a Waheeda Rahman, and try as Ms Chopra might, she never comes close to being convincing. She turns hints into signals, happiness into hysterics, her every movement an act. She looks her best when sternly strutting into a hospital, occasionally gets a line right, and her acting highlight comes with her resigned yet in-control body language as she sees off Annu Kapoor to his car. Yet these are but a few swallows, and she's an actress unworthy of this season.

The strongest acting comes from Vivaan Shah, who plays the film's lovelorn narrator, and Harish Khanna, as a loyal butler who knows it all. Both men have interesting screen presence and relatively solid characters, but are one-note, and frequently drowned out by the buffoons around them.

As for the husbands, only two are any good: Aleksandr Dyachenko charms both heroine and audience, as does Irrfan Khan [ Images ] when reading poetry or drowning breathlessly into Priyanka's eyes. Annu Kapoor is let down by a character written into caricature, while Naseeruddin Shah [ Images ] behaves differently every time we see him. John Abraham [ Images ], his biceps the size of Bandra, tries hard to be a rocker and fares only marginally better than Neil Nitin Mukesh, playing a furious armyman seemingly focussing on his moustache not falling off.

Yet the heartbreak is in watching Bhardwaj, that fantastic master director, make a bloated film that plods sluggishly along, a film that doesn't connect either emotionally or sensually.

I exit the theatre tiptoeing gingerly through treacley blood, past the fallen corpse of my expectations. That, ladies and gents, is Susanna's seventh casualty. And it's the only one that hurts.