Producer: Percept Picture Company
Director: Revathy
Starring: Shilpa Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, Mita Vashist, Naseer, Somayajulu 

 Music :Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy, Nikhil-Vinay, Bhavathi Raja
Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi, Sameer

If Director Revathy’s ‘ Phir Milenge’ deserves an audience it is solely because the film is a good idea, not necessarily a good film. One begins to feel slightly patronized by the sense of outrage that provides the backbone of the film that seeks to highlights the plight of patients diagnosed with the HIV virus and the ignorance of the general public about the disease.

The film has moments that are too showy — grandstanding scenes that hammer home the main messages.

Shilpa Shetty plays the protagonist in this tale, based loosely on Jonathan Demme’s film Philadelphia that fetched Tom Hanks an the best actor Oscar nod.

Tamanna is creative director at an up and coming ad agency where she works closely with her friend and mentor Mr. Subramaniam. Having lost her parents at an early age, she lives (in very comfortable and stylish digs, one may add) with her sister Tanya (a performance that can put one’s teeth on edge by Kamalini Mukherji), a radio DJ. We are shown repeatedly how successful and indispensable Tamanna is at her workplace through out the first few scenes.

When Tamanna takes a couple of days off to visit her Guru at an art ashram, she meets the man she has had a crush on for years, Rohit (a wooden, utterly comical) Salman Khan and tumbles into bed with him when he gazes soulfully into her eyes and beckons to her without uttering a word. A song or two later Salman disappears and Tamanna returns to her hum drum world of advertising.

After a chance visit to the hospital to donate blood, she is informed by a solemn looking doctor (Revathy in a cameo) that she has contracted the HIV virus. Tamanna, shocked and dismayed recalls her sexual escapade with her lover and remembers his boast of having slept with a girl in New York who had nine sexual partners. Then in a flashback she also recalls taking the mandatory seven pheras around the lit candles that were placed around the Art Ashram. (Maybe just to infuse our lead pair in a happy glow when they sang to one another while preparing to make pash love.)  Revathy falls into the age-old Bollywood trap – one that reinforces the idea that the one carrying the HIV virus had to be from New York in the USA and that the lovers could sleep together only after they had completed the seen pheras. Awwww, come on, Revathy give us a break!

Well, to come back to the story, all hell breaks loose when the boss is informed of Tamanna’s ailment and she is dumped, fired from her job unceremoniously. Tamanna sings sadly, paces around her home, and does some ruminating before deciding to take the system head on. She takes her case to court and finds out that lawyers are not lining up to represent her case. Until she meets another initially reluctant young lawyer Tarun (Abhishek Bacchan.) After an initial twinge of fear, of contamination by handshake, a physician friend  educates himabout the disease and he decides to take up Tamanna’s case. His mentor, teacher and friend Nasser helps him with valuable advice about law and life.

Subbu Sir, in the mean time has hired a super lawyer with a reputation for feasting on nails, Mita Vashisht (a definite caricature- talented actor otherwise, resorting to overacting under the inexperienced hands of director Revathy.) The court scenes are good; they look more like the real thing than the ones we see in Karan Johar’s films (packed to the gills with movie extras, with a hapless judge hammering order order every three minutes into the proceedings.) We also get several instructive monologues from Bachhan about intolerance and general ignorance about diseases in our society.

Salman Khan returns to India to sob and die and Tamanna visits him every day to sob uncontrollably with him, professing undying love whenever he starts to apologize to her. One is baffled about the strange attraction she feels or the weepy bloke but then – go figure!

All’s well that ends well and Tamanna ends up on the cover of a business magazine.

That said, here are a few things that were commendable in the film. Abhishek Bacchan turns in a great performance. One of the most underrated actors in Bollywood today, he is a better actor than his father ever was (bring on the hate mail, AB fans!) Shilpa Shetty takes a welcome break from her booty-shaking roles and turns in a decent performance. Somebody, please tell me why Salman Khan is in films!!

The film also succeeds in uncovering the hornet's nest of ignorance, prejudice, half-truths, and devastating lies connected with AIDS. Hopefully, this film will open the door for other filmmakers to cover the continuing drama of AIDS and the public's varying responses to it.

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