Kareena talks the talk but fails to walk the walk of a Kamathipura sex worker in Sudhir Mishra’s Chameli.

The late writer-director Anant Balani’s tale is about two strangers, a street hooker and an investment banker thrown together for an entire night. Rahul Bose plays the investment Banker Aman Kapoor, sober and muted, a perfect foil to the mercurial Chameli. As the night progresses, various characters walk in and out of the frame, certain staginess to the film sets in early.

During the course of the night, Chameli bribes a cop, beds him, sings and dances to the mandatory rain song, helps out a young man who is in love with a transgender prostitute (shown in a sympathetic light, mercifully) refuses to sleep with a customer who has AIDS, and is chased by her pimp because he has already taken an advance from the powerful customer. Whew!
Trying to save Chameli and bail her out of the situation, Aman goes to great lengths, one of which lands him in jail along with Chameli.

In spite of her trying hard, Kareena never really succeeds in transcending her larger than life Bollywood image to breathe credibility into the character of Chameli. She brings out the mercurial temperament of the child like Chameli with her quicksilver laugh turning into a hard pout when things in her life threaten to go awry. Like many prostitutes, she is able to perform the mental trick of standing outside of what she does, of detaching herself and believing that her real self is not involved.

Bose on the other had is adept at playing the Indian yuppie everymen and gives a lack lustre yet exacting performance as the grieving husband. It is a bit of a drag to see an actor of Bose’s calibre playing the same character in so many films (Mr. And Mrs. Iyer comes to mind)
Yashpal Sharma, who plays Assistant Commissioner of Police K P Singh is impressive. Sharma who is a mainstay villain in most of Bollywood releases last year and this, is most believable in this role.

Music by Sandesh Shandilya and cinematography by Aseem Bajaj is excellent.
Even though Chemeli is slick and entertainingly digestible, it has not done very well at the Box Office.

Incidentally, Kareena has also got Govind Nihalani's Dev, Mani Ratnam's Yuva, Dharmesh Darshan's Bewafaa and Abbas-Mastan's Air Crash lined up for release.

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