Aishwarya Rai Bachchan wears a Longines Evidenza

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan signed with Longines in 1999, and she has worn the brand on screen ever since, so the watch on her wrist in The Pink Panther 2 is less a prop-department choice than a continuation of that contract. The 2009 sequel, directed by Harald Zwart, brings Steve Martin back as Inspector Clouseau and drops him into an international Dream Team of detectives chasing a thief who is stealing famous historical artifacts. Rai Bachchan plays Sonia Solandres, the criminology expert assigned to the team.

The Longines Evidenza is a tonneau watch. Its barrel-shaped case, elongated numerals, and gently domed crystal come straight out of the Art Deco pieces Longines was building in the 1920s, and the brand revived the design as the Evidenza line in 2003. The tonneau has mostly disappeared from men's collections, but it survives in women's collections, where the curved case reads more like a bracelet than an instrument. No scene in the film holds on Sonia's wrist long enough to read the dial, so the identification of the watch as an Evidenza rests on enthusiast watch databases and on Rai Bachchan's standing Longines relationship rather than a clear look at the watch itself.