Quotes of the Day

First the Oscars and now Cannes. As the first Bollywood film to be included in this year's Cannes official selection, Devdas follows Lagaan — the Academy Award-nominated musical depiction of an anti-colonial cricket match — in signalling a double victory. One for the film, plucked out as the best of its genre in a year filled with quality Hindi cinema, and one for the festival, which is finally catching up to the idea that the product of India's film industry makes for artistically legitimate and universally appealing entertainment. It's not hard to see why the honor went to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas. Giving a modern touch to the Bollywood basics, this story of forbidden love dazzles at every turn and pulsates with energy from start to finish.

The film begins with shouts of joy and only grows bigger and louder from there. After ten years in London studying as a lawyer, Devdas (Shah Rukh Khan) returns home to his family and childhood sweetheart, Paro (Aishwarya Rai), who has had a candle lit for him ever since he left. As the overjoyed mothers run around singing catchy pop songs, the screen fills with reds and yellows so bright they seem unearthly. The houses both families live in are astonishingly lavish, each room leading to one larger and more luxurious. As the film unfolds, the settings become more and more glorious — everything glows, the costumes shimmer and the dance numbers are dizzying. It's the familiar Bollywood indulgence in color and light taken up to such an exhilarating level it often swallows entire scenes, making the action seem like an after-thought. Devdas is the most expensive film to come out of India yet, and it shows.

What keeps Devdas from becoming three hours of gaudiness is first-time cinematographer Binod Pradham, whose keen grasp of the ebb and flow of the film's pace makes a single moonbeam shining through a stained glass window as breathtaking as a golden room filled with candles. Pradham isn't afraid of extremes: at one moment, his lens is caught up in the frenetic sweep of a goddess worship ceremony, so lively it almost hurts to look at; at the next, he pitches the screen into darkness save the glint in the heroine's eye. And, of course, he makes the actors look good. As Devdas, Hindi heartthrob Khan (who has appeared on multiplex screens recently in Kabhi Khushi Kahbie Gham and Asoka) is the right mix of drama and cheese, and he still cries with more gusto than any man in Hollywood. The stunning Rai is a delight to watch, giving Paro a feisty innocence that contrasts well against the sultriness of Devdas's other suitor, gold-hearted prostitute Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit).

But Devdas is the son of a lord and Paro the daughter of a dancer, a romance forbidden by Devdas's jealous mother. His loyalty to his mother winning over his love for Paro, the tormented Devdas turns to alcohol for comfort. Paro's mother, insulted by the snub, forces her daughter to marry a much older man. According to Bollywood rules, mother is always right. But the film plays with those rules, first when its hero ends his ten-year absence by visiting the house of his childhood sweetheart before seeing his mother and then by making both mothers wholly unsympathetic, almost villainous. In fact, the female characters — two vengeful mothers, a spiteful sister-in-law, a doe-eyed heroine and a lovelorn courtesan — dominate the film as more complex and interesting than their male counterparts.

Both Paro and Chandra are abused by Devdas in some form or another. He slaps Paro hard enough to scar her and verbally degrades Chandra at every opportunity. And both accept the abuse as a sign of love — his violence is a show of his passion; the malicious words are a result of drunken self-denial. Watching two strong, intelligent women be physically and emotionally beaten makes for uncomfortable viewing, but gives the film a weightiness that distinguishes it from its more frivolous peers. Just as the mixture of light and dark makes for a visual feast, it also creates a multi-layered film that addresses the reality of the love story, not just the romance. With glamour, humor, shoulder-shaking tunes and sharp dance numbers, Devdas is among the best India has to offer. But add the stylish cinematography and wry self-awareness and it also holds its own against the best of the rest.

• JUMANA FAROUKY
• Devdas is the thinking man's summer blockbuster