I read about the movie at Merchant-Ivory Productions' website and couldnt wait to see it. The cast included my favorite Shashi Kapoor, playing the role that he was born to play - a successful, womanising, film star. Shashi in a negative role - that was something I had never seen before! Consequently my expectations were rather high when I began watching and it might be argued that I was doomed to disappointment!
The movie began very promisingly with Helen dancing on a giant typewriter. A song was being shot for a Hindi movie starring the successful actor Vikram (Shashi Kapoor). Come to watch the shooting was Lucia Lane (Jennifer Kendall) a famous American writer. Now, Lucia is the archetypal American writer - she is much married, middle aged, hungry for romance and utterly shallow, selfish and self-centred. (Did she have to be such a stereotype?) She also has a British accent that puzzled me until it was explained away later in the movie - she was actually English but settled down in USA.
Well, "four rapes" is an exaggeration. There is only one rape. The other three are attempts by essentially "good" men who, once their attempted rapes are foiled, turn into their would-be rape-victim’s best friends and protectors!! Why did I persist in watching such a bizarre film? Well, partly because the story was engaging to begin with, partly because I love Sharmila Tagore and was intrigued to see her almost-pairing with Balraj Sahni, and partly because, having started, I wanted to see where it was going! The film is the strangest mix of awful and engaging, with the awful far outweighing the engaging. 
Like all movies that are cursed by a bad second half*, this one begins very promisingly. There are snapshots of exotic Kenya including African wildlife and the “wild” tribals (much as I resent the exoticisation of India I can bear it tolerably well when its done to any other part of the world!) – all of which should convince you that you are in exotic Africa!
