Rohit and Sanya have invited Sanya’s friend Ira and Ira’s husband Basuki over for dinner to their cottage in what appears to be the outskirts of London. It’s a casual affair, with the hosts unbothered about putting on a show. Sanya (Zoha Rahman) is kitted out in a drab shirt-dress. Rohit (Arjun Mathur) serves his guests drinks but no snacks. The dinner: take-out pizza.

Ira (Rasika Dugal) doesn’t care. Ira’s clothes and overall demeanour fit the fresh-off-the-boat archetype – she even refers to her adopted homeland as “Ing-Laind”. Her spouse Basuki (Paresh Pahuja), on the other hand, is the epitome of the Indian immigrant who strives to be more British than the British.

Basuki is struggling to make a connection with a needlessly aggressive Rohit – the lack of appetisers is surely a source of irritation too. Basuki’s attention is diverted by a locked wooden chest in the vicinity. There’s a body inside it, Rohit claims – the corpse of George Curzon, who served as the viceroy in the days when India was ruled by the British. Basuki’s interest is piqued, and then he is obsessed with the contents of the chest.

Actor Anshuman Jha’s directorial debut Lord Curzon Ki Havel, written by Bikas Ranjan Mishra, is in the vein of classic locked-room mysteries, with an added layer of commentary about India’s bruising experience of colonialism. But the movie is too stilted and sluggish in its writing and staging to be engaging, let alone convincing.

As the night wears on – and it never seems to end – the characters drop their masks. This development suits Rasika Dugal’s put-upon housewife the most. The others are too sketchily written and unlikeable to register, although Paresh Pahuja takes brave stabs at playing the to-the-manor-born Englishman.

The 108-minute film, which is in both Hindi and English, feels like a play, and not a very smoothly paced one at that. Several scenes revolve around the quartet sitting around, awkwardly speaking in dialogue that is a bizarre approximation of what Indians imagine the British to sound like.

Basuki’s put-on posh accent is meant to be a sign of his pretentiousness. The film’s own notions about the British way of life is hardly rooted in reality.

Tanmay Dhanania turns up as a pizza delivery man who doesn’t deserve what comes his way. The supposed twist only reveals a bunch of cynical, self-serving people whose rants against empire and India’s colonial past ultimately ring hollow.

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