For all those who were looking forward to watching Kahaani 2 because their hearts leapt to their mouths at the sight of Vidya Venkatesan-Bagchi going ninja with her hairpin and fake pregnancy, we are the bearer of bad news. The only reason director and writer Sujoy Ghosh has titled his new film Kahaani 2 is so that fans of the first film flock to the theatres. Durga Rani Singh and Vidya Venkatesan-Bagchi share a face – that of Vidya Balan – but that’s about it as far as connections go.

Set in Kalimpong, Chandan Nagar and Kolkata, Kahaani 2 is a whole new story about a young woman and her daughter. The actors from Kahaani return, but they’re all playing different parts. Balan plays the mother who is confronted with the terrible scenario of her daughter Mini (Naisha Khanna in her childhood and Tunisha Sharma once she becomes a teenager) being kidnapped. There’s no ransom, but the kidnapper wants the mother to show up at an address. When she’s rushing to reach her daughter, Balan’s character is hit by a cab and she lands up in Maity Nursing Home.

Don’t be deceived by the dim lighting and distressed walls. Dr Maity’s nursing home is a fantastic medical establishment. For one thing, its treatment ensures a patient of “temporary coma” not only revives, but can also run the distance of a marathon within three days. Another commendable aspect of this nursing home are the gowns it has for patients – no embarrassing bum-exposing gaps in these. Hospitals across the nation, please be inspired and don’t get all pedantic about how the loose, gaping bits are actually for the patient’s benefit.

However, the hospital gown is not among the important questions in Kahaani 2. Those involve the woman lying comatose in Dr Maity’s care. Who is this woman? What has happened to her daughter? Who is after these two and wants the mother dead? Why does the policeman investigating the case seem to know her but pretend to his superiors that he doesn’t? In the initial chapters of the film, Ghosh’s set up is taut and riddled with mystery. Everyone seems to be hiding something and the nervous jumpiness that makes characters on screen start quickly infects the audience too. Each time Balan starts in fear, the anxiety in the audience goes up a notch, expecting an evil that will be more insidious and malevolent than Bob Biswas.  

Most plots have a straight, narrative line. Kahaani 2’s is the equivalent of a drunk making his or her way home. So much so that it’s difficult to say anything more about the film without giving away spoilers. Fake identities, hidden stratagems, creepy villains, revelations and twists pop up every few minutes, particularly after interval. The biggest con that Ghosh has pulled, however, is on Balan and the audience who were both under the impression that this is a film about a woman protagonist. It isn’t. A make-up less Balan – because lipsticks and eyeliner are not available in small-town Bengal? – delivers a valiant performance in an effort to impress upon us how serious an actor she is. However, she more than makes up for the lack of make-up with the astounding, red bruise that swelters around her eye for the better part of her screen time. For a protagonist, Balan’s character is disappointingly sketchy in its details. We’re given snippets of her life and no explanations for important fundamentals. Where, for instance, is her family? Why did she choose to live in Chandan Nagar? Why did she go to Kalimpong? Worst, Ghosh’s plot robs Balan of the final flourish that made Kahaani such a hit with audiences. That glory – of having planned and outwitted the world – goes to a man.

Kahaani 2 is much more predictable, not the least because ultimately the star of the film, both because of the writing as well as his performance, is Arjun Rampal.

Rampal, who does for policemen’s khaki what Bruce Springsteen did for denim with his Born in the USA album cover, plays Sub-inspector Inderjit Singh. He’s recently been shifted to Chandan Nagar and is desperate to get a promotion that will transfer him back to Kolkata. On his lap falls the case of the hit and run, and soon he’s whizzing around trying to uncover the mystery of the woman lying comatose before him. Rampal’s largely-expressionless face is perfectly bland for the role he plays and it is to his credit that within minutes of Kahaani 2, we stop focusing on his hunkiness and instead relate to him more as a cop straitjacketed by circumstances.

Balan is the face on the posters and enough noise has been made about Kahaani 2 being her film. However, sadly, this is far from the truth. Her Durga Rani Singh desperately needs an antagonist who can match the sly, dark brilliance of Bob Biswas. The villain in Kahaani 2 is smooth, but he’s too obvious and Ghosh doesn’t explain his motivation for the final crime convincingly.

In fact, Kahaani 2’s weakest links are the motivations. Why does Inderjit Singh choose the paths that he does? Why does the kidnapper want to kill the little girl? Why did that little girl catch Durga Rani Singh’s attention in the first place? The only person whose motives are clear is Inspector Pranab Haldar (Kharaj Mukherjee).

It isn’t as though Kahaani 2 is without its strengths. Ghosh’s casting and dialogues are excellent and credible. Minor characters like a roadside beggar and a constable linger in memory because of how perfectly they punctuate the scenes they are in. The acting is uniformly credible from everyone in the cast. It’s nice to see actors like Jugal Hansraj and Tota Roy Chowdhury do their bit without giving into histrionics. Ghosh is brave to try and tackle a topic as sensitive as child sexual abuse in a mainstream Bollywood film, but the way he approaches it through his protagonist is dubious, to say the least.

Like so many promising Bollywood films, Kahaani 2 is one film (a decent one) before interval and after interval, it unravels into a gory mess with few redeeming features. By the time we reach the end of the film, all we’re left with is a lament – for a story and a heroine whose potential has been botched out of whack – and an abiding sense of disappointment.