It was a special Saturday night date for Shilpa Shetty as she stood at the entrance to the preview theatre of Yashraj Studios. Her waist even tinier than usual, a little bit of cleavage flashing fashionably out of her body-hugging top, the whole support system of the Shettys was with Shilpa. Mama Shetty (Sunanda has also stylishly lost weight), Daddy Shetty (Surendra is always so openly proud of his daughters), Sister Shetty (Shamita awaits her turn in the spotlight) and assorted aunts and uncles stood by as Shilpa hosted her first big event on home turf after the Big Brother victory.

Shilpa Shetty’s private screening of Metro, six days before its official release, was like an event. Apart from being her first major Hindi film release after winning over the UK, Metro is also going to be one of the more prestigious assignments of her career.

And today, when Shilpa Shetty invites you, you feel privileged and turn up. Coming in early and tucking into the pre-screening supper (samosas, chicken sandwiches, chicken and paneer rolls, tea, coffee or cola, standard Yashraj menu for a big screening, it is whittled down when it is ‘only’ a press show!) were Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, Ramesh (Sholay maker) Sippy with wife Kiron Joneja, Vinod Chopra (with journalist-wife Anupama Chopra), Mukesh Bhatt (the producer of Murder and Gangster, director Anurag Basu’s first box-office successes), actress Kangana Ranaut (with frizzy, permed hair and white, chalky powder on the face, she co-stars in Metro), designers Manish Malhotra and Rocky S, Rakeysh Mehra (the Rang De Basanti maker), Sanjay and Zarine Khan and even the elusive Tabu.

Tabu’s presence was a surprise since the whimsical actress had turned down this very role in Metro which Shilpa Shetty had happily picked up last year! Sitting next to Tabu was someone who looked like Atul Kulkarni without a moustache. It turned out to be Atul Kulkarni without a moustache — he has sacrificed the hair on his upper lip for a South film.

If this reads like a party coverage, Shilpa Shetty’s Metro screening was nothing less than a celebrity evening. The icing on the cake was that the film was worth everybody’s presence.

The Love Actually rip-off, Salaam-e-Ishq too had a variety of relationships thrown together to make one long unwatchable film. Despite all those alluring marquee names, the audience had sniffed a bore and stayed away. Metro is also a film on a bunch of high-strung relationships, the love lives of people in a throbbing, stressful city. But it works because it is unpretentious, there is a slender thread that delicately connects the various relationships and Anurag Basu is the new Bengali director to keep tabs on.

But, unlike the Bimal Roy-Hrishikesh Mukherjee school of gentle filmmakers who brought a faint whiff of Bengal into their Hindi films, Anurag Basu is completely amchi Mumbai in his filmmaking. He handles relationships raw, energetic and emotionally on the edge, like a vintage Mahesh Bhatt film.

A cast led by Shilpa Shetty (after the AIDS-related Phir Milenge with Salman Khan and Abhishek Bachchan, this is her best), Kay Kay Menon (superb in the role of a chauvinistic cad), Irrfan Khan (he does, surprisingly, bring a smile to your face), Konkona Sen Sharma (you forget her dumpy figure as you just go along with her), Shiney Ahuja (mmm, not so great after all), Kangana Ranaut (once more the wrist-slashing, emotionally fragile victim), Sharman Joshi (pretty believable), Dharmendra and Nafisa Ali (yech, they even kiss!), makes Metro a neat two-hour experience. Lending it a touch of poignancy is that one doesn’t know how much time Anurag Basu really has. But, as he shows you in the Dharam-Nafisa portion, who knows whose time is up?

While watching Anurag’s slick work, you tend to forget that this was made by the man who midway through Murder found that he had blood cancer. Even if he had to go through blood transfusions during the making of Metro, Anurag Basu has recovered marvellously enough (he has even put on weight unlike cancer patients who steadily lose kilos) to come back and make more movies — and more babies. Even as Metro reached the theatres, his wife was ready to deliver their second baby.

Hey, psst!

Shooting in Kolkata for Aparna Sen’s The Japanese Wife, Moushumi Chatterjee doesn’t let on that all’s not well on the marriage front. It never has been but Indu, as friends call Moushumi, has spent over two decades covering up the flaws in her married life. For one, she has two really well-brought up daughters who don’t show any emotional scars.

But recently, husband Babu (Hemant Kumar’s son) didn’t pull his punches when he said to me that he had moved out of Moushumi’s spacious Pali Hill apartment into a one-bedroom of his own. “And no way will I ever put even a toe into that house again!” he asserted. After so many years of braving all the odds together, they sure seem to have called it quits.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International