Jaya Ganga

Nishant (Raïs), a young Indian writer based in Paris, is tracing the Ganges from its Himalayan source to the sea. He's haunted by memories of Jaya, a woman (or possibly a river goddess) he met in France; nevertheless he soon falls for Zehra (Mishra), a sensuous, uncommonly poetic dancing girl who performs in a brothel. Nishant uses his Western buying power to take Zehra away from all that. Can happiness be theirs, or will the past catch up with them? Adapted from his own semi-autobiographical novel, the first feature by Vijay Singh may have made waves in Paris, but here it's hard to endorse, or even to divine the thinking behind the praise offered by that otherwise discerning cinephile city. From the opening, with Nishant wandering the hills in meditative mood, turgid metaphor and empty pictorialism hold sway.