Khoya Khoya Chand and Om Shanti OM

New Delhi, September 09: A film within a film is an old device, as old as the movies, but it never fails to enchant. Bollywood returns to that reel-within-a-reel plot in two November releases — Khoya Khoya Chand and Om Shanti Om.

Sudhir Misra's Khoya Khoya Chand, starring Shiney Ahuja and Soha Ali Khan, revolves around the love story of a director and a heroine in the sepia-tinted 1950s. Farah Khan too has chosen a film backdrop for her second directorial venture, Om Shanti Om, which has Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone in the garb of two '70s actors in love.

The John Travolta-starrer Get Shorty, Nicholas Cage's Adaptation , British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, Italian director Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion are all tales of a film nestling in another. Romantic comedies America's Sweethearts, wit Catherine Zeta Jones and John Cussack, and Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, are similar films with storylines focusing on film stars.

In Bollywood, however, Ram Gopal Varma should get the credit for popularising it. Ahuja seconds it, "Most of the recent cinematic innovations ultimately trace back to Varma." Whether it is Rangeela, Mast or Naach, Ramu's Factory doled out the perfect romantic film-in-a-film format. All three of them had central characters working in films.

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap explains why such films are invariably romantic ones: "I think we Indians are great lovers and we always expect our heroes to be great lovers. So when filmmakers decide to turn the camera on themselves, they will show off the fact. Indian cinema is pseudo French."

The only exception was Nagesh Kukunoor's Bollywood Calling, which was a spoof of the south Indian film industry. "The film was the perfect satire. It was genuinely riveting as a reality check for the audience and filmmakers themselves," says filmmaker Homi Adajania.

So are we going to see 2007 as a reel story wrapped in another, or grimace at fresh re-runs to offer us a double bill? Farah Khan has the perfect answer. "Only sex and Shah Rukh sell. Rest are just add-ons."