NEW DELHI: The experimental ‘Mr Singh Mrs Mehta’, written and directed by Pravesh Bhardwaj, is to be strategically released on 25 June at just around 20 screens and will later be taken to other parts of the country.
Based in London, the film stars Prashant Narayanan with British-Indian stars Aruna Shields, Lucy Hassan and Naved Aslam. It is produced by Tutu Sharma and Manu S Kumaran.
The film is a mature story of adultery, attempting to show how circumstances are often responsible for what married couples do. When Ashwin Mehta and Neera Singh find that their spouses are having an affair, they find comfort in their growing friendship even as they resolve not to be like their unfaithful mates.
Bhardwaj said he was inspired by agony aunt columns in newspapers to conceive this story. While the film had only four main characters, painting assumes an important role in the second half.
Bhardwaj, who had earlier made the ‘Shaheen’ serial for television, denied that the film had been made with non-resident Indians in mind and stressed that the choice of London was not for this reason.
He denied any problems with the Central Board of Film Certification which had cleared the film with an ‘Adults only’ certificate. However, he admitted that the process of censorship had taken a long time, primarily because of some steamy scenes between Narayanan and Shields.
Narayanan in an interview later denied any titillating scenes and said that kissing scenes were very normal in films today.
Stating that the film was shot in Wales, he said he was a director’s actor and it was the heroines who had made him feel comfortable on the sets.
Asked why he had acted in a very small number of films, he said an actor has to be meticulous. He had recently acted in an international production ‘Shadows of Time’ and had also acted in films like ‘White Elephant’, and ‘Waisa bhi hota hai’.
He also said he was a writer and was presently writing the scripts for some films including one related to badminton – for which he had attained national championship status – and had his own band of musicians. In fact, he often made suggestions to music directors in all his films.
