Yana Gupta in 90 Ghanta

Really? Am I looking good?” Yana Gupta sounds as excited as a bubbly teenager on being told that in the posters of 90 Ghanta, splashed all over, she is the centre of attraction. The film, after all, marks the Czech-born Bollywood belle’s first appearance in a Bengali film.

Yana has done an item number in a sizzling attire that is already making many babujees go dheere on the streets of Calcutta. “I loved that song,” she trills.

Yana, as one will find out this Friday, has danced to a khyamta song in the Jisshu-Tota-Swastika starrer. The first line goes thus — Amar kancha pirit parar lokey paktey dilo na. (The earthiness of the lyrics defies translation.)

Yana, of course, could not make sense of the words.

“But I feel a song, if it’s moving my body, if I feel like dancing…” her voice trails off as she rewinds to the number. “That’s how I choose my work in films,” she explains.

The song, shot in Mumbai, was choreographed by Inder, known to work on Salman Khan’s moves for his stage shows.

“It was a brainwave of our producer Swapan Ghosh of Morpheus Media Ventures,” says Saugata Ray Barman, a National Award-winning director on his Tollywood debut. “Yana is dancing in a bar where the shooting of Shah Rukh Khan’s Don also took place.”

90 Ghanta is a thriller, a genre that few Bengali film-makers have dared to touch. “Our film industry is in a perilous zone, with most mainstream films biting the dust last year. It is up to us, movie-makers, to offer viewers interesting fare,” says Ray Barman, explaining why he has chosen to tread a different path.

Though the makers are tight-lipped about the plot, word is out that the film has fast-paced action rooted in psychological turmoil and involves a supari killer.

“I have been carrying this plot based on a game of death in my head for long,” Ray Barman smiles.

So, come Friday and it will be Jisshu and Tota locked in a chase unto death, all in a deadly game lasting a brisk two hours. Will the audience play along?