Predictable, tacky, avoidable

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Watching this film is in no way a hellish experience, merely a supremely tacky one. And it is paved with several good intentions on the part of debutant director Anup Das. The screenplay, also by Das, turns the spotlight on the issue of surrogacy. But far from presenting any nuanced underst­anding of the phenomenon, Das turns it into a slu­gfest between material values and, well, maternal ones.
So we have predictable stereotypes — Tanvi (Rituparna Sengupta), a career-minded woman with a yuppie husband (played by Ki­ran Jhanjani), planning their first child after three years of wedded bliss. Of course, since society has not one example to offer of a successful working mother, poor Tanvi is caught in a dilemma of keeping either her career or her baby. An abortion and several mopey sce­nes later, the co­u­­ple hits upon a unique solution — why not have another woman go through the rigours of pregnancy and deliver them one bonny child? All that talk about parenting being a full-time occupation is apparently nonsense. So we have Tanvi — unable to take six months off from work to carry the baby to term — willing to take exactly how much time off to raise the child once it comes into existence? We aren’t told.
At no point does the couple’s suffering resonate; the height of their distress is expressed by Kiran Jhanjani’s post-my-wife’s-abortion drunken rant: “Hul nikalke hi to meri biwi ne mera haal behaal kar diya hai”. At the height of their travails, the scene shifts to a village where the future surrogate mother Gouri (Divya Dutta) is caught in a hand-to-mouth existence as her husband Mohan’s (Yashpal Sharma) traditional clay artefacts find no takers. After a few minutes of screen time, that includes one obese, lecherous Thakur and a ghastly item number, you know that Go­uri is go­ing to “rent out” her womb to save her family fr­om economic privation. Cut back to the city where Tanvi awaits and we have pl­enty of poignant intercha­nges between the two wom­en on the joys of motherho­od, the hollow nature of professional success etcetera.
The performances leave a lot to be desired, especially from a seasoned actor like Sengupta. Distress and gr­avitas are best expressed by clutching her own throat and the styling for her corporate look — frowsy, ill-fi­tting suits and shirts — is a horror. Dutta is pleasant in a unidimensional sort of way. Yashpal Sharma is the only who turns in a believable act, emoting very naturally.
The music by Roopkumar Rathod is fairly pleasing in the first half but fails in the second. The camerawork is adequate, if repeated shots of Marine Drive and Mumbai traffic are what yo­ur heart desires. As for the rest — dialogues, character act­ors, the supposed hum­our — the less said the better. Life Express is one train you’re better off avoiding.