Sleazy Sushant Dubey (Manoj Bajpayee) is on a business trip with Aparna (Tabu) and their three year old daughter Titli. They check in to a fancy resort in Mauritius and Sushant checks out the receptionist before fielding a call from another woman, Kamya (Neelam). It’s clear what his priorities are. But since no other options present, he resorts to sex with his own not very keen partner in an awkward scene that had all the sensuality of Greco-roman wrestling. When Aparna wakes in the morning she discovers that Titli has disappeared from their room. She flies into a panic, while Sushant seems a little too calm. The hotel staff are not very useful, and the police seem to have read the Keystone Cops training manual. Then there is the guy downstairs who seems to be obsessed with little girls. So what happened to Titli? And will her parents find her?

That sounds like the basis of a reasonable thriller. But sadly writer-director Mukul Abhyankar squanders both the idea and his cast in a messy, screamingly obvious film that signals every twist and turn. Just in case you managed to black out and miss anything, listen out for the blaring dun-dun-DUNH! at key moments. One of the twists was evident from the get go, and the only way a red herring could have been any more obvious would have required an actor to wear a red herring mascot suit.

Tabu is stunning as the stricken and slightly unhinged Aparna Did she harm her child, was she the target of a revenge plot, was it just a crime of opportunity, or is something entirely different playing out? Tabu shows great range, from raw and gut-wrenching fear to more subtle and calculating expressions as the truth of her relationship with Sushant is revealed. The film feels quite stagey and is exposition heavy, but she imbues even her more passive scenes with an inwardly focussed energy that constantly drew my attention. Aparna is much more complex than she initially seemed. I really wish the writing had been better. I liked her costumes, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be checking out the embroidery on her kurtis rather than fretting about the little girl.

I hated everything about Sushant so I guess that is an acting triumph for Manoj Bajpayee. Sushant was craven, opportunistic, and creepy. Bajpayee struggled with some bad writing both in terms of the dialogues and the logic of what Sushant was doing. His feeble obfuscation may have been supposed to build tension and create doubt but it was just annoying and often didn’t serve a purpose. I was so annoyed when the cops nearly pulled the pin just because Sushant claimed Aparna had become mentally ill after being diagnosed as infertile. It was typical of the lazy plotting that tried to jazz hands past inconvenient details, and showed everybody believing women are just a walking uterus with the sole purpose of popping out babies. Sigh. But I cheered up immensely when Sushant copped a tight slap. That made up for a bit of my suffering.

Annu Kapoor is atrocious as Inspector Budhu but the material couldn’t have helped. I was amused that everytime he threw in a few words of French (seeing as he was a Mauritian policeman with an entirely Hindi speaking team and suspect set) the subtitlers gave up and wrote [Foreign Language]. But at times it felt like the lead characters were all in different films, weirdly edited together. Their performances just didn’t gel.

I was so pleased to see Tabu back in a leading dramatic role. I wish the film had lived up to its potential and to the lead pair’s characterisations.