Trailer: Aishwarya overacts her eyes out in Jazbaa

Aishwarya looks as good as she always did, but those eyes look so brimming with hysteria that it seems like melodrama’s just been building inside her, says Raja Sen.

It's been five years since we’ve seen Aishwarya Rai in a film, and watching her comeback is unreal on many levels.

She looks as good as ever, but her eyes are so chock-full of hysteria that it appears pent-up melodrama has just been building up inside of her.

And now Sanjay Gupta -- who better to poke an eye -- has brought it all out. 

The trailer for Gupta’s Jazbaa -- a remake of the Korean film Seven Days -- sees Rai as a lawyer forced to defend a hardened criminal (Chandan Roy Sanyal playing it sleazy) but every shot of the actress forces those haunted-hamming eyes on us, as if to scare us from noticing the rest of the weak performance.

Of course, there’s a chance Gupta has only focused on the most high-strung bits and that Rai has more subdued moments in the film, but from this first look it all seems overdone.

Even the infallible Irrfan Khan, who wears sunglasses indoors a la Karunanidhi and who is told to have “an Amitabh Bachchan style.”

Okay then.

The film looks slick enough and a pacy thriller is right up Gupta’s alley, though, so Jazbaa may well prove very watchable. It’s also a good-sign that Gupta -- one of the most legendary plagiarists in the business -- is now licensing films instead of ripping them off.

That legitimacy, combined with his well-earned chops as an action director, may well lead to a tight, fun film. But why is Aishwarya acting like she’s been kidnapped from the sets of a horror film? (Do take it easy on that larynx for a bit, Ash, maybe drink some lemon tea?)

Then again, perhaps the thriller is just subterfuge and Gupta is just lulling us into theatres where we’ll learn that it’s all very Ramsay.

Either way, we’ll find out when Jazbaa releases on October 9.