Producer: Sunanda Murali Manohar
Director: Jagmohan Mundhra
Cast: Aishwarya Rai, Naveen Andrews, Robbie Coltrane, Miranda Richardson, Nandita Das, Rebecca Pidgeon, Steve Mcfadden,
Nicholas Irons, Raji James, Deborah Moore
Music: A R Rahman

‘Provoked: A True Story’ is grounded on the epic U.K. court case that altered the outlook of British laws towards domestic violence forever. This film featuring Aishwarya Rai in the lead has a poignant message installed in it. But considering the graveness of the issue, all onscreen endeavors to film the story totally appears futile and unimportant.

‘Provoked’ is the saga of Kiranjt (Aishwarya Rai) and the brickbats that life throws up at her. Kiranjit is a simple traditional Punjabi woman pursuing law who settles for an arranged marriage with Deepak Ahluwalia (Naveen Andrews). Deepak insists her to give up her academic endeavors so that they can settle down in London. Kiranjit like a true and subservient Indian wife happily accomplices to her husband’s proposal. But once they settle down in the metropolitan city, things takes a different spin altogether. Kiranjit ends up becoming pregnant while Deepak passes on into a life of liquor consumption, infidelity and domestic violence.

For ages, Kiranjit is trapped in this life of cruelty and endless ache. Deepak each day afflicts her with all forms of verbal, sexual and physical abuse. Choked in the world of age-old customs, she is unable to seek help from her own people. Unable to take any more torture in her stride, one night she finally decides to get rid of her nearly fiend husband by smoldering him when asleep. Kiranjit is detained, alleged and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Most part of the film features Kiranjit’s trials and tribulations within jail as she waits for the outcome for her petition. While in prison, she struggles hard to adapt to her new surrounding. She is ill treated and abused by her in mates until she comes across her new cellmate Veronica Scott (Miranda Richardson). Though both these women hail from altogether different worlds, they succeed to empathize with each other whole heartedly that makes life a bit easier for her.

Although the story is based on true incident, the onscreen drama revolving around Kiranjit’s imprisonment is scantily assembled and implemented. The story never really attains the same kind of magnitude as the factual story. Carl Austin and Rahila Gupta's adaptation of the autobiography to which the movie is based plays out like a campy made-for-TV movie that only scratches the surface of reality. The life shown in prison is hardly convincing.

Director Jag Mundhra pulls together nearly half a dozen agonizing episodes to brief us on the torrent of abuses succumbed by Kiranjit over the span of ten years. The episodes are well filmed and bring out the depth of the events. But Aishwarya Rai appears very poised throughout the film. It can be hardly perceived seeing her perfectly coifed make up after all those horrifying incidents that she has gone through so much in life.

The film although dealing with such delicate issue never really sparks off. The film lacks the very intensity and poignancy to stir our hearts. The film, though loaded with a significant point loses itself amidst poorly drawn performances.