Victimized and exploited by the neon-lit dreamy world of pleasure & passion, middle-class aspirations & expectations for a better life often find a road going nowhere but to a convinced end near the dark dell of death.
Ajay Bahl's erotic but sensitive adult-thriller B.A.PASS dares to replicate-recreate a modern-day 'quite harsh & dark in reality' real world set in the Pahargunj area of Delhi, celebrated or rather infamous for banned provisions of ideas to get high on life. Prostitution and sex-rackets is just one of them and also the premise of the film that hasn't been touched before on such brutal level.
Adopted from a short story 'The railway Aunty' by Mohan Sikka, it is a saddening story of a young man who, after losing his parents in an accident, is now bound to live with his 'not so-kind' aunt. To make things worst, purposely he becomes a sex-slave to a sensuously attractive lady of seduction. The game of passion & pleasure that too with so much of easy money involved in it, soon lands him in the darker and deeper world of male prostitution. The more colorful it looks in night, the more drained & hollowed it sounds in daylight.
Beautifully shot, smartly conceived, nicely written and confidently performed by first-timer Shadab Kamal & the immensely impressive and bold Shilpa Shukla make it an honest effort that touches you with its bravura but brutal portrayal of sex, seduction, depression, desperation, dejection, oppression and betrayal. Divyendu Bhattcharya & Rajesh Sharma provides a good supporting cast. Deepti Naval in her 2-scene guest appearance leaves a mark.
But at the last, it is Ajay Bahl who impresses you with his confident take on the story to create a sensitive thriller out of it, rather than lurching on making it a sleazy sex-drama. Though the aesthetically shot love-making scenes are an essential part but sometimes they look just a distraction from the gritty story-line.
Subject may sound as a pleasurable watch but I would not misguide you as the sensuously bold posters of the film suggest you. It is a film of merits but not for masses who fancy tickling in the lower part of body more than sensing 'staying for long' bleak human emotions.
