This one is in your face, dark and entertaining. The author has left no stone unturned in his attempt to explore the dark side of sex and adultery, unlike the Bhatt camp who behave themselves as liberators of closed Indian minds and merely titillate the audience.
SINS has created a lot of news even before it hit the halls. Writer-director Vinod Pande has boldly chosen a shocking tale of prohibited love between a Catholic priest and a village girl (and later a married woman). He has chosen the story based on a news item. SINS may not be an easily digestible ‘love’ story. Not everyone would like the depiction of a priest’s moral degeneration.
Pande has already gained the reputation of dealing with the dark side of love and relationships in Ek Baar Phir, Yeh Nazdeekiyan, Ek Naya Rishta, and Sach. In SINS he moves a few steps forward in exploring such dimensions. He goes beyond the bedroom door and builds a daunting pyramid of desperate passion between Father Williams (Shiny Ahuja) and Rosemary (Seema Rahmani).
The lovemaking sequences between Williams and Rosemary get more and more wild and desperate as the story moves on. The break comes in the way of irreconcilable tragedy with the priest’s love turning into perverse possessiveness.
Pande has done remarkably well in portraying the beast living inside the man. the scenes relating to Rosemary’s determined efforts to escape Williams’ obsessive attentions to be with her kind husband Graham (Nitesh Pande), are shot with a lot of intensity. The girls’ hostel scene where William calls Rosemary away on the pretext that her mother is ill is also very impressive.
Vinod Pande has never been afraid of reaching into unlit areas of the man-woman relationship. The body language of William & Rosemary and the way the director silhouettes them in mid close-ups during the intense scenes are quite exceptional.
Despite these plus points, SINS cannot be termed as an outstanding piece of work. It has its flaws in the form of incoherence and inconsistency. The director doesn’t seem to know the limit to which he can go in depicting intense love. But his selection of subject and the genuine intensity with which he has executed the story are outstanding.
In SINS he goes all the way to show a priest’s descent into unbecoming passion. At the same time, the narrative desists from portraying Rosemary as a pure victim. A sequence like the one where she takes off her nurse’s uniform after Williams gifts her with pearl beads, or the one where Rosemary’s mother (Uttara Baokar) gently leaves her daughter in privacy with the priest, indicate how sexual barter is a religion in itself.
Newcomers Shiny Ahuja and Seema Rahmani have come out with flying colors and it is very difficult to say that they are new to the field. Their facial expressions and body language are surprisingly fluent. Seema Rahmani has rendered a restrained and effective performance. However, it is the protagonist’s ‘Keralite’ accent that mars their performances.
Though the film explicitly depicts the irresistible force of lust, it also effectively drives home the moral stand as opposed to the blind passion.
Vinod Pande’s controversial film built around lust might get mixed reactions from the different kinds of audiences. Though you may disagree with his viewpoint but still you might recognize that what he shoes is life and not sheer imagination. Vinod Pande deserves to be complemented for his guts and intensity.