Debutant director Bappaditya Roy's tale is an arresting ensemble piece in today's day and age where morality has become a thing of mockery. 'Sau Jhooth Ek Sach' is inspired by a 1946 play 'An Inspector Calls' by Jimmy Presley, set during the great depression.

Set in an unscrupulous and amoral business tycoon's living room, the movie aims for the onion effect. As layer after layer of guilt is peeled off we come face to face with the mirror image of a society that respects only money and success.

Police inspector Vivek (Mammooty) cross-examines one member of the industrialist Vikrant Pradhan's (Vikram Gokhale) family after another regarding the suicide of a hapless girl in a tenement.

The inspector arrives after the lavish party hosted by the tycoon to a bunch of socially eminent people to launch a unique Dry Gin under their brand name and to announce daughter Zoya's proposed marriage into the large Khanna industrial house. Behind the facade, the fact remains that there is inherent discord within the family, as we discover through Vivek's interrogation. The flashbacks about the pregnant dead girl's past, cut into the placid drawing room setting like welters of lightning on a cloud-laden night. By the end of it all, left to themselves, the family shares visions of their past to arrive at individual resolution and guilt and we are compelled to look inwards for answers on the social inequalities that have plagued our system of governance for years. 

The next morning after the interrogation, the family discovers to their shock that there is no police officer with a name of Inspector Vivek in their zone and that there was no suicide incident and above all, there were no visitors to the house since its main gates got closed after the party. But there is news about the suicide in the papers that day...

Not that "Sau Jhooth Ek Sach" really aims or succeeds in being anything more than an interesting exploration of a guilty, festering value system. The editing is intermittently choppy and the dialogues tend to get shrill in their self-righteousness. According to the director, introspection is a theme close to his heart and he gives a message that the harder you try to run away from your conscience the more it will chase you.

There are interesting performances, particularly by Neha Dhupia as the body-phobic daughter of the business family who finds her bearings before the night is through. Joy Sengupta, always a joy to behold (remember him as Jaya Bachchan's son in Govind Nihalani's 'Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa'?), epitomizes the theme of guilt and redemption more aptly than any other member of the cast.

Vikram Gokhale looks fine as the arrogant tycoon. But his performance loses its edge the minute he opens his mouth to let loose a volley of vernacular English dialogues. Mammootty's comeback to Hindi movies is disappointingly low-key. As the plot's conscience-keeper, he seems to be standing above the troubled subject looking into a crisis that's not really his.

Overall this offbeat film is surely not for the masses but for the select few who dig this genre.