Is Aishwarya getting too bogged down by her pretty face?

Sarbjit has been roundly lambasted, and it seems the former Miss World's comeback series - that started with Jazbaa - is coming a cropper. What she really needs to do is prove she's more than a camera-friendly stunner

The importance of being earnest can't be undervalued. However, in the case of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's performance in Sarbjit, earnestness just hasn't proved to be enough. Lambasted by practically every reviewer for her 'screechy', 'laboured' and 'over-the-top' portrayal of an ageing Punjabi woman with a cause, the 42-year-old, ever gorgeous actress must have been unpleasantly surprised by the barbs, instead of the expected bouquets, which have come her way.
She has been faulted for her inconsistent Punjabi diction, high-pitched dialogue delivery, mandatory faux wrinkles, powdery grey hair, and the clichéd pair of spectacles which are a must to convey gravitas in Bollywood.
Earlier, Omung Kumar had extracted a fairly inspired performance from Priyanka Chopra in Mary Kom. The fact that the director could have guided Aishwarya towards a more lifelike enactment, devoid of artifice, hasn't been raised at all.
From the look of things, Omung Kumar seems to have been totally in awe of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. In the course of the film's pre-release publicity campaign, he waxed eloquent about -the former Miss World and the face that has launched innumerable beauty products, claiming that she had undergone a thorough transformation.  
Right. But, at best, it turned out to be a superficial transformation. Much more conviction and depth were required to recreate the real-life trauma of Dalbir Kaur, a woman who campaigned tirelessly for the release of her brother, Sarabjit Singh, incarcerated in a jail across the border.
Incidentally, Sarbjit is certainly not Aishwarya's first jab at an image makeover. Almost a decade ago, she had dispensed with glamour to play an oppressed housewife in Jag Mundhra's Provoked, which was again a sincere attempt but not exactly unforgettable.
And under the supervision of Kolkata's late auteur Rituparno Ghosh, she had opted for the off-mainstream Raincoat, based on an O Henry story, as well as Chokher Bali, a take on Rabindranath Tagore's classic tale about a young widow.
Which is to say that Aishwarya has taken career risks before. Like it or not, though, it is her beauty that has scored over her acting skills. Overridingly, the Aishwarya Rai Bachchan moviegoers love to love has been in the extravagantly-mounted films of Sanjay Leela Bhansali (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas), Ashutosh Gowariker (Jodhaa Akbar), Yash Chopra (Mohabbatein) and, not to forget, Mani Ratnam (Iruvar and Guru).
Perhaps she's caught in the dilemma of her camera-friendly looks coming in the way of her acceptance as an artiste of dramatic calibre. In the West, Julia Roberts could succeed in making the crossover from a pretty face to an Oscar-winner with Erin Brockovich. Ditto, Leonardo di Caprio with the Oscar-feted The Revenant. Lucklessly, Aishwarya still has to attain credibility as an actor of substance.
Clearly, she needs a director who can understand her emotive strengths and weaknesses. As it happened, Jazbaa - her comeback film after a hiatus of five years following marriage and motherhood - turned out to be a downer. Director Sanjay Gupta, who's a competent technician, again, didn't care to correct her high-pitched dialogue delivery. Consequently, the overwrought Aishwarya was no match for Shabana Azmi, her senior co-star in Jazbaa, who's infallibly under control of her faculties.
Indeed, it's a pity that Aishwarya, who has made a splash for the last 15 years on the Cannes film festival's red carpet, while endorsing a top-of-the-line beauty brand, couldn't quite become a permanent place in international film projects either. Sure, she has featured in The Pink Panther 2, Gurinder Chadha's Bride and Prejudice and The Mistress of Spices. Consider the waves being made currently on the global scene by Priyanka Chopra with Quantico and Baywatch, and by Deepika Padukone with xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and you can't help feeling Aishwarya has been left behind in the race of dual-tasking in the disparate worlds of Bollywood and Hollywood.
At this very moment, she has just one project on her plate - the Karan Johar-directed Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, in the company of Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. Meanwhile, Sarbjit hasn't clicked. Yet given her combative spirit, she's capable of springing surprises. Frequently, harsh criticism inspires actors to fight back to assert that the detractors were hopelessly wrong.
In keeping with the adage that the best is yet to come, here's hoping that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan can still somehow assert that beauty need not necessarily be just skin deep.