Stripped to kill!

Raj Vaidya in Madras

Only Kamal Haasan could pull it off.

The front page of the brochure of his no-holds-barred bilingual Abhay, (Aala Vandhan, in Tamil), shows him crouched and completely in the buff.

Shocking is the first word that comes to mind.

"Ha! Ha! It all depends on what we are exposed to. Thanks for the compliment, anyway!" quipped Kamal.

We are a few hours from the launch of Abhay, on October 18, in Madras. The film, which stars Kamal Haasan in a double role, will be directed by superhit director Suresh Krishna.

His two Hindi forays -- the Salman Khan-Revathi starrers, Love and Jagruti were not quite successful.

A few reasons as to why Abhay is an ambitious project. It's a bilingual, being shot simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil. Krishna clarifies, "This is not a dubbed film. Both versions will be shot separately, though in the same schedule. We have taken utmost care in deciding the cast of the film so as to strike a balance. The film will have artistes from both Hindi and Tamil films. Raveena Tandon plays the main lead opposite Kamal Haasan. We have kept the tastes of both the audiences while deciding the costumes of the film so that it doesn't appear too one-sided."

The film will be replete with special effects including computer graphics. It boasts 15 minutes of computer graphics sequences -- some of the stuff never seen in Indian films before. The special effects and CG will be executed by an Australian company, Cutting Edge, a specialist in the field.

Its track record includes animation and effects for Hollywood films like Beatmaster and Komodo.

David Peers, the company's visual effects supervisor, will oversee the entire shoot schedule of the film. He informs that Abhay will have both the characters played by Kamal Haasan actually appearing as if they are two separate people. The cost of the effects alone is expected at Rs 13 million.

To further lend the film international standards, the stunts will be designed by Grant Page, whose past record includes blockbusters like Mad Max.

That makes this film the costliest project that producer Kalaippuli S Thanu has undertaken. Only recently he made the Tbu-Aishwarya starrer, Kandukondain Kandukondain at about Rs 7 crore. He, however, prefers to duck the question whether it will be the costliest film ever made down South.

Kamal Haasan recently finished writing the screenplay and the dialogues for Aala Vandhan.

The seeds of the story, he reveals, came from a novel he wrote about 17 years ago. At the time, he was shooting for a Tamil film -- whose name he has now trouble recollecting -- in Bombay. He recalls, "I had to report daily on the sets at 9 am, whether I was needed or no. I would have to wait around for three hours every morning, before they would call me to shoot. One day, I got tired of just lousing about. Which is when I started writing this story. It was serialised in a Tamil newspaper and lasted 36 weeks!"

Although Abhay is an adaptation of that novel, Kamal has taken due care in giving the film a fresh approach. He has worked hard at etching out both his characters -- one good, the other evil.

"I was fascinated by the characters when Kamal first told me the story," says Javed Akhtar, who is writing the Hindi lyrics for the film. He adds, "Normally, a character is shown feeling only one emotion at a time in our films. But there is not one sequence in the film where Kamal's character (the evil one), is not experiencing, at least two-three contrasting emotions. That, too, at the same time! This makes the character very unpredictable. Hence my fascination with it."

Kamal hastens to add, "The whole idea behind Abhay is to expose the hypocrisy behind the so-called fearlessness. Nobody is fearless. My character in the film starts out as one and realises the same truth about himself in time."

Another thing that attracted Kamal about the subject was the hidden evil "which lurks inside all of us." He insists, "Of course, we generally manage not acting on our impulses mainly due to societal pressure. But the fact still remains that there is a monkey lurching inside all of us. He adds, amidst guffaws, "And I'm not being zoological here."

Abhay is not about schizophrenia, insists the legendary star who has won accolades for more films than he cares to remember. "It is a film that revolves around sibling rivalry. It is about two people with similar faces, but dissimilar faiths. More than the technique (computer graphics, etc), it will be interesting to learn whether we are able to peel the layers and get deep under the skin of the character. That is where the true challenege for me as the writer and actor lies," he says.

Meanwhile, the music composers of the film, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy recorded two songs in Bombay.

The film will be shot in a single schedule in New Delhi between November and January 2001. The film is slated for an April 2001 release.