After directing the mid-length movies “Foreign” in 2010 and “Compromise” in 2011, actor/dancer/director Rahul Nath presented in 2014 his first feature film which he also wrote. “Khazana” tells the story of a woman seeking to escape domestic hell with unexpected consequences.
Vaidehi (Ulka Simone Mohanty) is a beautiful young bride from a humble background, recently married to Amar (Ahmed Lucan), a rampant lawyer of a wealthy US-based Indian family. The film opens with Vaidehi in a beautiful dress that hardly covers up some tell-tale bruises, preparing a traditional feast for a family and friend dinner party. Looking at the guests around the table memories flood back and the narration rewinds to 18 months prior that evening. We see Vaidehi in her husband's family home, where her mother-in-law and sister-in-law make her feel rather unwelcome, while her husband abuses her, screams at her for the smallest reasons and doesn't even bother to hide his affair with the secretary. The poor woman's only friend seems to be the servant of the house, a young scarred (?) man who silently shares with Vaidehi the pain of being treated like an animal by the nasty family.
Secretly, Vaidehi starts some counselling sessions with a therapist and confesses to him her concerns about her husband and their unhappy marriage life. The therapist, as a reaction, jumps on her with the intent of sexually abusing her and, after being rejected, proceeds to badmouth her to the husband. If that wasn't enough, Vaidehi's family doctor (Rahul Nath) is under the thumb of Amar for an immigration problem and this will result in another depressing abuse to the woman. But after her umpteenth beating at the hands of her controlling and violent husband, Vaidehi decides enough is enough. Now she is about to serve her revenge (and not only) on a beautiful plate to the unaware guests of the dinner party.
Domestic violence kills two women every week unfortunately. Whilst domestic abuse and generally violence against women exists in every section of society, we rarely hear about it, especially in a middle to upper class environment. And undoubtedly “Khazana” does an excellent job in exposing this scenario, especially with a tongue in cheek, genre finale.
However, the film suffers for a certain lack of depth and layers in the script. The mono-dimensional way the characters are portrayed is rather unsatisfying from the audience's point of view. We see the husband screaming all the time at Vaidehi, but we have no idea why he is screaming, why Vaidehi is so submissive, why they married in the first place. Same happens for the mother-in-law, the sister-in-law and the husband's mistress: we know nothing about them and their hate for Vaidehi; it looks like they are just conveying a stereotype – like a sort of wicked stepmother and stepsisters – to allow Vaidehi to be the Cinderella of the story. Moreover, the rapist-therapist is honestly not very believable; it's certainly undeniable that professionals can take advantage of their position, but here he is dangerously close to a caricature, partly due to the bizarre choice of casting the handsome and pumped-up Bahram Khosravian,i who looks straight out of a soft-porn movie set.
All these supporting players are like cardboard cut-outs, only functional to justify the final revenge showdown. There isn't much flesh around those cut-outs and the risks is to get the result of turning even Vaidehi into a hard-to-believe character. The final horror/splatter twist, with its sense of humor, is the saving grace of the work but it takes almost three quarters of the film to get there; it would have been interesting to see a development of that part, maybe with an emphasis on the thriller trope , fully embracing the B-movie look re-visitation. In fact, the film does indeed leave you with a certain curiosity to know if – and how – Vaidehi will get away with her actions.
An element that elevates the movie is its protagonist. Ulka Simone Mohanty is a very skilled actress – other than having a splendid, very natural appearance – and her metamorphosis from a submissive wife and a psychologically and physically abused woman to a cold-blooded vixen is rather impressive. Together with Rahul Nath (the director himself in the part of the doctor) they make the best actors of the whole cast and the others unfortunately are nowhere near their talent – to use an understatement.
Technically the film is done on a budget, but it manages to make the best of it. The colour palette though veers towards a uniform hue of beige making it look closer to a television program than a cinematic experience.
Ultimately, though in some ways uplifting for the welcomed retribution, there is something slightly depressing about the use – one more time – of a storyline in which a woman must resort to deviousness or murder to get her life and dignity back and “Khazana” half-missed the opportunity to present an original and interesting take on this sad matter of domestic abuse.
