Love in world cinema: How romance works in Kiarostami, Rohmer and Linklater’s films

“I like it.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I don’t see why I have to try and convince you.”

“I wonder how you can convince yourself.”

“You’re a real art expert, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see it as work of art. I like its subject.”

“Its subject?”

“I like the way she rests her head on his shoulder.”

“I can’t believe you’re so…sentimental.”

“I can’t believe you’re so…irresponsible.”

This is an argument that takes place between an art critic (William Shimell) and an unnamed French woman (Juliette Binoche) in the film Copie Conforme (Certified Copy), by celebrated Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami. In it, a mysterious French woman and the art critic talk about art and copies, while roaming around Tuscany.Gradually, the conversations become personal and intimate. Soon they’re sparring with each other like a married couple. One brilliantly written scene reflects how arguments can get bizarre to show years of suppressed emotions. Binoche has just been to the washroom, dabbed bright red lipstick on and put on long, pretty earrings. She sits at the table, looking at Shimell expectantly. He barely notices and grumbles about his drink.

She: “Look at your wife. She has made herself pretty for you. Open your eyes.”

He: “This is just not the moment. It is five o’clock. I’m hungry. I need a drink.”

[Crestfallen, she pulls off her earrings.]She: “When is the moment? It wasn’t last night either. When is the right moment?”

He: “Look darling, I was tired. Why couldn’t you just think my poor husband is exhausted, he has falling asleep.”

She: “Just say you don’t love me anymore.”

...

He: “You’d fallen asleep at the wheel going down the motorway. So I’ve a simple question for you."

She: “Simple answer.”

He: “Why did you fall asleep?”

She: “I was tired.”

He: “Did you fall asleep because you stopped loving our son?”

She: ”I dozed off, I didn’t sleep.”

He: “I dozed off too.”

She: “No, you were asleep.”

By the end of the movie, you don’t know if they met in the morning or have been married 15 years. Are they strangers play-acting – or copying – a marriage or are they a couple pretending to be strangers and moving into role-play?

Certified Copy is never really over. Long leisurely takes, still frames, ambiguous endings and talky scenes keep you engaged and engrossed. The tantalizing romance between this couple that you can’t pin down lingers in memory. The lines with which they provoke and woo each other are a seduction aimed at the audience. And it works.

Love is a shape-shifting thing. It’s usually a soaring ballad or a dance number in Bollywood. In Hollywood, it’s sealed with a kiss and some gasp-ridden lovemaking scene that offers flashes of naked skin. And then there’s the love we see in world cinema – a quietly intense thing that is filigreed with words and conceits.

There are only a few filmmakers who can indulge in this sort of love story without becoming annoyingly self-indulgent. French director Eric Rohmer is one of them. His films often follow a pattern. The central plot tends to be about a man who is attracted to one woman, distracted by a second and ultimately chooses to return to the first. It’s almost Biblical in its simplicity – the man chooses virtue over vice.

In Rohmer’s Ma Nuit Chez Maud (My night with Maud), a staunchly Catholic man spends a night with Maud, a single mom and divorcee. She challenges his religious values and he has to defend them while confronting the temptation she embodies. Each conversation in Ma Nuit Chez Maud is a little love story in itself. Intimacy is explored with ruthless honesty and a chaste yet cruel passion.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film is a 20-minute conversation between Maud and the Catholic, shot using still frames. Maud lies under an exotic white fur blanket while the man strolls around the room, pontificating and arguing. Maud listens and also provokes him. “You are both a shamefaced Christian and a shamefaced Don Juan,” she tells him.

He tells Maud, “Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking. It would be idiotic to generalize, but each girl I met posed a new moral challenge.” As he bares his soul to Maud, he seems almost unaware of the next moral challenge lying in bed.In Oscar-nominated Richard Linklater’s beloved trilogy of love stories, the challenges are not moral as much as everyday banality. Based on languid conversations, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight goes deep into the viscera of a relationship: the courtship, the breakups, marriage and estrangement. In short: growing up.

The trilogy is a thesis on love, with each film following the lead couple over the span of a single day. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet, fall in love and age over the course of the three films. In Before Sunrise, they walk around in Vienna. In Before Sunset, they explore Paris and in Before Midnight, they’re a married couple on a holiday in Greece.

Their conversations range from the esoteric to the bizarre, like any couple’s. Or perhaps these are the conversations, with their artful mischief and poignant candour, that we wish we could have had.

CELINE: “All right? There could be a revolution any second...”

JESSE: “Don't.”

CELINE: “People eat a lot of feta and olive oil, they act all happy but they actually talk about how ‘angry’ they are... and it confuses me and I don't know what's going to happen in the next few weeks.”

JESSE: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me tell you what's going to happen alright. The same thing that always happens: Nothing.”

CELINE: “Alright. You know what? I have had absolutely zero time for myself, I have ten thousand emails I have to answer that I didn't answer... “

JESSE: “And you think I don't?”

CELINE:”I'm happy you have time to contemplate the universe and have existential problems because I don't - I barely have time to think. I work, I baby- sit, I work, I baby-sit. “

…

CELINE: ”I have realized I’ve just stopped loving you. This is it.”

Except of course, it isn’t. The love stories continue, as we replay scenes and remember moments in our memory, long after the films fade to black.

DIL DHADAKNE DO: ZOYA AKHTAR'S TITANIC

(This has first published on Firstpost.http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/dil-dhadakne-do-review-zoya-akhtar-one-of-bollywoods-finest-but-the-movie-is-shallow-2281500.html)

When a camera does an almost a single-take waltz, around a brilliantly choreographed song with an infectious rhythm, and Ranveer Singh, Farhan Akhtar and Anil Kapoor grooving with hardcore filmi desi gusto, it’s both a treat and a feat. In Dil Dhadakne Do, this is achieved by one of Bollywood’s best directors, Zoya Akhtar.

There are few directors who add meaning to feelgood cinema. Akhtar and Raj Kumar Hirani are the top contenders in that arena. Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara remains the finest in several aspects of filmmaking. There’s unusual casting; a screenplay as smooth as a BMW ride; grand visual imagery and above all, Farhan Akhtar’s witty one-liners, which leave you guffawing along with pranksters who add ‘bwoys’ to the dictionary.

Dil Dhadakne Do is the story of a family celebrating the parents’ 25th wedding anniversary on a luxury cruise around Europe, and it is an ambitious and well-intended attempt to sail around unspoken territories. It’s a sincere attempt to go deep, which in the entire first half ends up dragging under its serious tone and humourless weight. The film just about stays afloat with the help of three winsome actors: Farhan Akhtar, Anushka Sharma and Shefali Shah.

Ranveer Singh’s energy and chemistry with Sharma are welcome sparks and a lifeboat for the boredom that threatens to sink this lavishly-mounted film. His and Sharma’s self-choreographed dance, with its shades of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence’s wild moves in Silver Lining Playbook, is a joyous, invigorating break from the monotony of a squabbling family.The Mehras are a wealthy Punjabi family of five: Kamal (Anil Kapoor), Neelam (Shefali Shah), Ayesha (Priyanka), Kabir (Ranveer Singh) and Pluto. Pluto is not just a pet. He has a voice (Aamir Khan), he thinks and he gives us the lengthy lowdowns on how this family. The Mehras hide their true feelings and shy away from real communication. As Sharma’s Farah puts it, “Tum log baat nahin karte?” So it is left to Pluto to do all the talking and philosophising. Guess Khan is a pro after preaching his way through PK.

The one who makes brave attempts to talk is Kabir. But first he must fly aircrafts when depressed. And then lie cheerfully to make sure his plane isn’t sold by his dad. His sister, Ayesha, has been married off to the stuck-up Manav (Rahul Bose), so that she does not elope with a manager’s son. Boy and girl discrimination rules both households and Ayesha is the silent victim whose pouty lips are sealed despite her education and business acumen.

Meanwhile, Kamal is on the brink of a bankruptcy and secretly takes anti-anxiety pills. Neelam constantly swallows his insults by stuffing her face with cakes. (Watch out for each of their solo scenes in the privacy of the bathroom. Shah can evoke tears without shedding one herself.)

Kamal and Neelam, stereotyped to a fault, dominate the story with their controlling ways. On board with them are equally stereotype uncles and aunts who also rule over their own children. Except for a nice moment with the aunties sitting in a row at a kitchen table and one of the quipping, “But who will give us a job?”, they all serve as prettily dressed props with identical handbags, lining the deck.

With the middle-aged parents crowding the ensemble plot, Kabir and Ayesha are rendered puppets who entertain when they dance and swing; and engage when they eventually shout and scream. You are left wanting to see more of Akhtar and Sharma, the only outsiders to the rich and closed community. Unfortunately, they remain on the periphery. So does the humour surrounding the film’s issues, which don’t come across as real when flushed with the gloss in costumes, make-up and the locations.

Kapoor is in his full element as the cold and ruthless businessman, husband and dad. Shah takes the cake, literally, with her chin-up act. Singh many not be King but is quite charming as the sulking prince. Chopra tries so hard to be perfectly made up that her looks constantly distract you from her performance. She saves herself with the right submissive expressions of a long-suffering wife in bed. Bose as her husband is decent in his indecency. Zarina Wahab as his controlling mom has some great lines and she delivers them surprisingly well. Sharma sizzles and Akhtar shines in their cameos.

When Dil Dhadakne Do’s chaotic climax comes, the shift in characters and dynamics don’t matter. Not even the lifeboat used in the end can rescue Zoya Akhtar’s brave Titanic cruising on shallow waters. Perhaps Ranveer Singh put it best when he joked in an interview that was the making of Excel Travel and Tours. It’s exotic, but not rejuvenating.

WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAY: FAMILY REDEFINED

(This has first appeared in Firstpost)

Take the best elements of the delightful 2006 film, Little Miss Sunshine – children, grandfather, warring parents – remove its dark depth and churn it into a larger, crowd-pleasing, feel-good film with a clichéd dash of humour, and you get What We Did On Our Holiday.

This passable summer-holiday watch has Gone Girl’s Oscar-nominated star Rosamund Pike as the everyday wife and mom. Her presence and performance are just as average. The same is true of David Tennant, who plays Pike’s husband.

As it happens with any family in life, the children take centrestage in What We Did… . They are not cute little darlings, but brats who are capable of driving their parents crazy. In the backseat, they’re an annoyance. Put them in the front seat and no parent will survive their antics. Their intrepid and adorable grandfather (Billy Connolly), with his dangerous sense of humour, does exactly that on his supposedly last birthday.

What follows is a Hollywood ride that gives two BBC writers – the writer-director duo of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin – a chance to poke fun at the British. The children’s behaviour is explained to strangers with one line: ”They are from London.”

A London based couple, Aby (Pike) and Doug (David Tennant), drive down to the scenic Scotland Highlands with their three brats. They’ve gone to visit their cancer struck father, Gordie (Connolly) on his 75th birthday. The constantly arguing couple is about to split and decide to keep it a secret for the sake of the ailing dad.

However, Aby and Doug’s brats are the sort who would be more than happy to spill more beans than you can count. And there are many. Like, the parents live in separate houses now. Oh, and pop is having an affair.

The writing goes out of its way to make it clear that this is a dysfunctional family. And if this wasn’t evident to the presumably dimwitted audiences in the course of the film, then Aby gives a last key speech on how its all about loving your family, functional or otherwise. You’d be forgiven for thinking it belongs in the climax of a Karan Johar film. It’s another matter that this speech is one of What We Did…’s big failures since it’s used to breezily wrap up a hasty and lazy third act.

Fortunately, What We Did… has the brats. Mickey (Bobby Smalldridge), 6, worships the Vikings. Ten-year-old Lottie (Emilia Jones) has mastered the art of serious, mature expressions while she jots down every family secret in her notebook. Aby and Doug’s youngest, Jess (Harriet Turnbull), is the cutest and the scene-stealer. She has rocks for pets and shamelessly steals her uncle’s keys.

The uncle is Doug’s elder brother, Gavin (Ben Miller) who is as much a kid as Jess. Keep an eye out for the clapping scene (after a boring violin performance by Gavin’s son) with Gavin and Jess, which is quite chuckle worthy. Gavin’s wife, Margaret (a delightful Amelia Bullmore) is a depressed nutcase in private but utterly composed in drawing rooms. Her character is a stroke of fine writing, in its subtle and funny exploration of the pressure that intensifies from keeping up family appearances.

Between the three little monsters and the two family comedians, there is much fun to be had at grandpa’s birthday.

One thing is guaranteed after watching What We Did On Our Holiday: you may not be keen on brats, but you will be sold on the idea of a holiday in Scotland.

TANU WEDS MANU RETURNS:KANGANA VS KANGANA.IT'S COMPLICATED.

(This first published on Tellychakkar.com)
Four years ago in Tanu Weds Manu, Tanu won your heart over with her bad girl image and drinking and schmoozing ways. This year Datto will vie as much for your heart with her endearing tomboy innocence, Haryanvi accent and her smashing knockouts handed to anyone who dares misbehave. It’s a tough competition between Tanu and Datto. Or Kangana vs Kangana. How on earth will second time groom, Manu (Madhavan) choose? Plus there is the gun happy, sexy ex boyfriend, Raja Awashti (Deliciously rakish Jimmy Shergill). To top that, there is a new admirer, Chintu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) smitten with Tanu-the best part of the sequel - Tanu Weds Manu Returns.

It’s all crazy and complicated. So is the impossibly contrived, over the top plot with some good scenes and dialogues which play high and fast to the gallery.

Director Anand Rai, along with a writer, extremely gifted with wit and humour - Himanshu Sharma are experts at creating characters madly and hopelessly in love. Raanjhanaa had Dhanush ,the deewana of Benaras happy to die in Sonam’s arms. Now, in TWMR, there are several of the loony in love characters.

The most dramatic, of course is Tanu. She is seen, a long jacket wrapped around her slim frame, roaming the streets of Kanpur, in the dead of night, a glass of liquor in her hand, lost in the old strains by Geeta Dutt… “ja ja ja bewafaa…” Guru Dutt was definitly smiling from up above, at this haunting tribute.

Then there is Datto, the wisp of an athlete who puts up such a brave fight against her village family rooted in caste beliefs, that you can’t help falling for her, just like Manu. Little wonder, he barely notices the kerosene brought in to burn him alive.

Apparently, Manu’s wedding is never short of death defying adventure. If he almost got shot down during his first wedding in the Tanu Weds Manu, his life is at stake yet again. Not just that, ex-wife (it doesn’t take long on screen for divorces to come through), Tanu, makes sure she dances at his wedding while he watches from atop a ghodi. When Tanu dances here or at a strangers wedding, the fierce rage and anguish in her jhatkas and matkas are enough to win Kangana more admirers and fans.

But another contender for applause is not far behind. When Datto gives a self defiant speech in Haryanvi, fighting for herself respect and says she is an athlete who gets admission in a Delhi college on her own merit and can earn her own living unlike Tanu, writer Himanshu Sharma, has a clear winner. More so, when Kangana sounds like a real Haryanvi. Her fiery spirit, boy cut and big teeth (kudos her stylist)  prove to be tough competition for Tanu’s mad moods, pretty bangles, jhumkas and seductive curls.

Tanu is the proverbial wife who can drive a husband really mad. So mad that he actually lands up in an asylum in London. She thinks nothing of taking off for Kanpur and calling his best friend, Pappy ( Deepak Dobriyal) to come and rescue Manu, more as an afterthought. Once home, she is out to  shock and scandalize and break anyone’s wedding plans in the family. Even if she has to come out in a towel and greet the guests and tell the hapless bride to be to find more adventure in running away, with or without a boyfriend. She herself plans to have an affair and seeks out old flame who she calls Awasthiji.

But there is a twist in the tale, a hilarious blast from the past and TWMR gets wickedly funny at interval point. All hell sets loose but so loose that the director cannot gather it back with conviction.

The film has everything unbelievable, going for it, be it the way Tanu and Manu break up or the way a quick second wedding plans begin for Manu. The ending too has an easy copout.

But the film charms and engages with its insane people riding the streets of Kanpur. There is even a hilarious tug of war between Awasthi and Chintu  with Tanu on the scooter seat. The  art department is visibly efficient all throughout in overcrowded terraced houses and peeling of pea pods by a male family member (Rajendra Gupta). Incidentally, Gupta is Manu’s father who gives a long gyaan on marriage to a running background sound of his wife yelling and nagging. The scene ends with a classic blackout: a solution to marital fights.

The supporting cast is a riot. Swara Bhaskar with a baby related secret, Eijaaz Khan as the Sardar doing dandiya, Zeeshan as the shameless (non) paying guest lawyer and Deepak Dobriyal who squeals out every funny line ,and above all, the gunda charmer who Jimmy Shergill plays suitably subdued with flashes of past behavior. It’s not an easy task to make your presence felt amongst these colourful and talented lot falling over each other to outshine the dynamite packed in wispy Kangana; but Madhavan with his quiet, shy smiles and occasional outbursts, stands his own, comfortable in his 80 kilos presence.

Despite all its mad and hurried, rather unreal wedding drama, Tanu Weds Manu Returns is an entertaining, crazy ride in a double decker with  Kangana as bonus. The queen rocks as drama queen.

With a Geeta Dutt song to boot, who needs band baaja?

Is Tollywood a graveyard for older Bollywood heroines?

Twenty-one years ago, she was the first Indian to win the Miss Universe crown. Eleven years ago, she had enough oomph to be the dream Chemistry teacher, dancing in sexy chiffon sarees, in Main Hoon Na. Shah Rukh Khan broke into a R D Burman song every time he set eyes on her in the super hit film. Today, hitting 40, that same Sushmita Sen is happy playing a corpse in the Bengali film, Nirbaak.

It's cruel irony that a SRK song pays an ode to Sen's beauty, albeit with a grim twist, in Nirbaak. The Hindi song, “Tujhe dekha to yeh jaana sanam…” plays on her last admirer’s cellphone, as he gazes at her still form inside a morgue, covered in white sheet, her bare shoulders and face gleaming luminous.

As falls from grace go, this is a painful one. Sen had never bagged the best of roles in Hindi cinema, neither was she particularly well-known for her acting skills. However, her vivacious charm and sex appeal were undeniable, and remain so. Yet, there she lies in Tollygunge morgue forgotten by her Main Hoon Na fans and filmmakers.

Sen is not the first to turn to Tollygunge way after being dismissed by Bollywood. Talent and beauty are not enough when age catches up with a Hindi film heroine. Manisha Koirala had to make do with an ungenerous amount of screen time in Rituparno Ghosh’s Khela in 2008. She was 37 at the time. Despite the few scenes, she made her presence felt, as an unhappy wife who wants a baby. You couldn't help feeling, though, that Ghosh had wasted Koirala and valued her only for the superficial gloss, fading as it might be, that she as a Bollywood actress added to Khela's publicity.

When Bipasha Basu's career slumped after flops like Dhan Dhana Dhan, she tried to gain credibility by dropping her “sex symbol” image and going demure in sarees with long sleeve blouses, complete with big, black bindi, in Rituparno Ghosh’sShob Charitro Kalponik in 2009. The film, surprisingly, won a national award for the best feature film in Bengali. Basu, though, didn’t contributed much to its success. Her beautiful face barely twitched with emotion and Ghosh decided to dub her voice. Perhaps that's why Basu is content, screaming and running in high heels, in B-grade horror movies in Bollywood.

It’s difficult to say though, what’s more horrifying: Basu not being scary enough or Sen playing corpse.

By the time Dia Mirza starred in Pratim Dasgupta’s Paanch Adhyay, she was in that uncomfortable situation where her lead roles were for forgettable films like Hum Tum Aur Ghost, but she was carving a niche for herself in memorable cameos, like her role in Lage Raho Munnabhai. In Dasgupta’s Bengali film, she looked stunning and performed earnestly. Wisely perhaps, Mirza, 33, appears to have cut her losses and go behind the camera.  As producer, she brought us a fairly decent Bobby Jaasoos, starring Vidya Balan who incidentally made her debut in Bengali film, Bhalo Theko in 2003. It probably didn’t bother Balan that trees played more crucial roles than her in the film since she was on the threshold of what was to become a very fine career in Hindi cinema.

It’s a huge pity that Sen has to make do in Nirbaak with a role that requires her to say very few lines while her character is alive and the rest of the time, lie around doing nothing.

Oh, she does a solo dance too. Around a lusty tree, which is in love with her. As though Sen is attractive only to a lump of wood, literally. This amorous tree is shown emitting liquid discharge when Sen is asleep in its shade. And guess who is jealous of Sen in the film? A female dog; that is, a bitch.

Nirbaak is Sen’s first Bengali film. She was last seen in a flop Hindi film called No Problem. It’s been precious five years since then. Perhaps this gap explains why Sen has subjected herself to such a deathly role. Or maybe because the director, Srijit Mukherjee, who is this year’s National Award winner, dedicated Nirbaak to Salvador Dali.

Promoting Nirbaak, Sen was all praise for Tollywood and dismissed Bollywood by saying of actors in the Hindi film industry, “We look good and our job is done.” Sen said she appreciated the way actors got into their characters’ skin in Bengali cinema. Was she referring to the tree or the dog or Jisshu Sengupta who just looks handsome or Anjan Dutt who is simply disgusting in the film? Is this reason enough for her to slip into a morgue, professionally? We can only guess, along with marvelling at her being thankful that the director “made sure he made me part of the film in which I had to speak absolutely nothing.”

If Nirbaak fetches some festival (read: pseudo) award for Sen, it might be worth the actress’ time. But it will be no match for her gorgeous million-watt smile and husky voice, which deserves much more. The trophy will be a small consolation prize for the death of the Bollywood heroine.

BOMBAY VELVET:LOVE IN 60's PRETENCE BOMBAY AND ALL THAT JAZZ

(This has first appeared on Firstpost)

There are two shootout sequences in Bombay Velvet. One of them starts with a wonderful drum roll. The camera is on Ranbir Kapoor’s face, which wears the most anticipated expression of determined revenge. Then we see his back as he rises from the floor, armed with a tommy gun in each hand. This is the Scarface moment, the dream action scene every actor loves to play and every Tarantino-struck director loves to shoot.

Kapoor and director Anurag Kashyap are no exceptions. So much so that, Kapoor forgets he is Johnny Balraj here and Kashyap was probably too trigger happy to have his Gangs of Wasseypur moment to care about the timing of the sequence. And so, the only dramatic scene in the movie ends like a gun with a silencer that misfires. The following climax involving Karan Johar, is a unintentionally hilarious version of Gabbar saying, "naach Basanti" in Sholay.

Bombay Velvet follows Balraj (Kapoor) and Rosie’s(Anushka Sharma) stories. She is a nightclub singer and he is a streetfighter turned henchman. Rosie has suffered abuse since she was a little girl and Johnny has survived poverty. He is in a hurry to become a “big shot” and gets picked up by journalist and businessman Kaizad Khambatta (Karan Johar introduced in a yellow jacket). Khambatta sets up a nightclub called Bombay Velvet, where he can entertain clients who need persuasion and where liquor flows despite prohibition. Johnny and his friend Chimman are given the task of running Bombay Velvet.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Mistry (Manish Chowdhary), Khambatta’s childhood friend, current friend and editor of “Glitz”, makes Rosie his mistress. He then sends her to Bombay Velvet to do some digging about Khambatta. She’s supposed to seduce Johnny for information and she does, only to fall in love with him in earnest. And so begins a love story full of betrayals and danger. (That Mistry conveniently disappears later in the plot is another matter).

Consider the elements that Bombay Velvet has been trumpeting (pun intended). It’s supposed to be an epic love story mounted on a grand, lavish scale set in the Bombay of ’50s and ’60s. The sensational promise of jazz, cabaret, nightclubs; a distressed, heavily made up singer with heavy gowns and big red flower bows in coiffured hair; a perpetually beaten up boxer, madly in love with her; a sly Shylock. The big appeal is the backdrop — the city’s post-independence history of mill strikes, rooted in a non-fiction book, Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash.

Sadly, the backdrop is also the biggest sham about the film. Bombay Velvet pretends to show a real Bombay, but is actually as pretty and artificial as a Sanjay Leela Bhansali set, only in lovely sepia tones. Real facts are just touched upon and relegated to a few lines at the end of the film. The song “Sylvia” nods at the infamous Nanavati scandal, but the film doesn’t talk about it. There’s banter that could have been meaningful, but doesn’t end up to be. For instance Khambata calls Mistry “Russia ka tutoo”, and Mistry in turn calls Khambata “American agent”. Had their rivalry been developed, it would have made Bombay Velvet a more interesting film and a better testament to the city’s history than Rosie and Johnny’s love story is.

Instead we get passing references to mill strikes, a reference to Russi Karanjia’s Blitz which is Glitz in the film, named after the real publication-Blitz. Manish Chaudhary plays Jimmy Mistry, clearly modelled upon Karanjia. Only, Chowdhary does not come across even remotely as a Parsi, which is something we’re reminded of each time Johnny calls him “Bawa”.

There has been much talk about the use of jazz in the soundtrack. Apparently, there were live recordings by musicians brought in from Prague, England, Chennai and Mumbai. Music director Amit Trivedi also reworked the famous song from CID, sung by Geeta Dutt, ”Jaata kahan hai deewane…”. Back when CID was released, the censor board did not allow the picturised song as it imagined a word “fiffy’ to have a “double meaning”. Trivedi’s revamped “Fiffy” brings back the original song, but ‘jazzed’ up, it loses half its charm.

Bombay Velvet boasts of 13 months of editing, two edits (Thelma Schoonmaker, Prerna Saigal ), one year of pre-production, 25,000 kilos of costumes and eight years of research. Mumbai was recreated in Sri Lanka, which is quite a feat for the art director and despite the challenging camera work by Rajeev Ravi, it doesn’t quite bring alive the magic of Marine Lines or Colaba.

The backdrop and jazz paraphernalia charm and seduce initially, but quickly becomes tiresome. Balraj and Rosie’s love story is predictable and cliched, but despite all the show of passion — tempers flying, slapping, kissing, bathtub scenes et al — there’s little emotional connect between the audience and the couple. The scenes don’t flow smoothly and the intercrossing cuts serve to disconnect rather than involve. This is particularly disappointing, as the edit does not reflect the craftsmanship expected of a Hollywood editor who has worked with Martin Scorsese.

Sharma and Johar try their intense best and manage to sustain interest, to some extent. Sharma’s expressions in the song “Dhadaam” will tug at your heartstrings and Johar’s private moment of sneaky laughter is delightful. Kapoor, in contrast, is like an injured boxer who does not belong in the ring. His Balraj flounders and crumbles. Raveena Tandon Thadani makes a worthy special appearance in one song, with a giant purple peacock feather as her crowning glory. Satyadeep Misra as Johnny’s loyal friend Chimman and Kay Kay Menon as the Bollywood-loving cop do their part with panache.

Yet, all this isn’t enough to redeem Bombay Velvet, which tries too hard to be a Taj Mahal. Ultimately, though, it just ends up feeling like monumental vanity.

PIKU:JHAALMURI WITH LOTS OF MUSTARD OIL

(This has first appeared on Firstpost.com)

Kolkata’s jhaalmuri is no ordinary bhelpuri. The flavour is tangy, spicy and mouthwateringly addictive. The secret is the pungent mustard oil. One has to acquire a taste for the texture and the strong smell. Piku (Deepika Padukone) is like that hot and tongue burning spicy jhaalmuri and her father, Bhaskor Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) is double dose of mustard oil. Difficult to digest or even like initially, but by the time he has properly bulldozed his way into your life, you’ll find yourself longing for that rasping holler of “Pikuuuu!”

This quarrelsome duo never talk. He snarls, she yells. They fight and they scream. The only time they smile together is when they sing a Bengali song. When the two get drunk, expect the time of your life. (The famous Amar Akbar Anthony drunken scene will be forgotten forever. If that was about Amitabh Bachchan’s slurred dialogue delivery, the Piku scene with him dancing in the bedroom is a masterpiece in body language.)

Put a grouchy, old, constipated man, his extremely rude daughter and complaining relatives together at a dining table, and you'd expect some emotional drama and fireworks. At Piku’s table, though, there is only one conversation: on constipation.

How to get satisfactory potty is the subject of every kind of drama here and it’s amazing how director Shoojit Sircar pulls off a 125-minute film, circling around small, daily arguments. Whether it is sperm in Vicky Donor or “motion” in Piku, Sircar and his writer Juhi Chaturvedi are relentless in their focus upon their characters’ obsessions.

The old, constipated man introduces himself simply as “Bhaskor Banerjee, Bangali”. And like a true Bengali, he is proudly critical of anything and everybody. As he puts it, he is “brutal and honest.” So much so that he doesn’t believe in respecting his 30-year-old single daughter’s privacy to ward off a suitor. He bluntly tells the doomed suitor that Piku is “sexually independent”.In fact, this liberated side to Piku is the most intriguing ingredient in her characterization. She looks at sex purely as a “need” and her friend and colleague Syed (Jisshu Sengupta) has an interesting role to play here. The casualness with which the subject is treated, dismissed and not explained in the writing itself, adds a wonderful, unspoken and unseen element that laces this celluloid jhaalmoori.

While Piku is aware of her father’s demanding and selfish need for her to be around forever, she resigns herself to living a single daily drama of her Baba’s major problem — that of achieving the nirvana of a perfect bowel movement. All she asks him daily is, "Hua?” He touches his paunch gingerly and the expression says it all.

Piku’s immediate outlet for her frustration is the cab she takes to work everyday. This results in perpetual taxi wrecks. Somehow, not too convincingly in the screenplay, the wretched owner of the cab company, Rana Chaudhary (Irrfan) finds himself in a nightmarish situation of driving the quarrelsome, weird father and weirder daughter from Delhi to Kolkata.The road trip is accompanied by a big wooden chair with a potty hole in the centre. The kissa kursi ka continues with even more fervour as Rana starts impressing the shamelessly khadoos Bhaskor with his own constipation remedies.

This leads to the most remarkable scene between the two actors — Bachchan and Irrfan — with Irrfan at his candid best, performing the idea of squatting at an Indian toilet, but on a bed and suggesting Bhaskor try the same on the Western commode. The ease of the two actors' comic timing is reminiscent of Bachchan in his older Hrishikesh Mukherjee movies, like Chupke Chupke.

To Sircar’s credit, we don’t glimpse Bachchan’s iconic dialogue delivery or playing to the gallery ways even for a second. All we see is a kurta pyjama-clad, almost disgusting Bhaskor with a big paunch.

One would have thought that these two veterans would take centrestage with their quirky roles. But instead, it is the kohl-eyed Deepika Padukone, with sincerity and deep concern writ on her perpetually-angry face, who steals the show. Moushumi Chatterjee as Piku’s outspoken aunt is a welcome change from the loud Kirron Kher.

Unfortunately, the story while dealing with a most sensitive issue of grownups taking care of ageing parents, does not delve deep into any kind of bonding. Rana’s life at home, with a mother and separated sister (repetition of Vicky Donor’s hero’s aunt) is touched upon, but cursorily. Barring one fantastic scene displaying Bhaskor’s insensitivity towards Rana’s dead father, there isn’t any memorable bonding moment between Bhaskor and Piku.

This lack of deeper emotion and the focus on endless toilet humour takes away from an ending that could have made Piku a film at par with Mili.Interestingly, Sircar chooses not to get cinematic in his use of visuals. The camera ignores all opportunities of classic outdoor shots during the road trip and instead stays close to the characters, in keeping with the intimate, personal drama at the heart of the story. The edit gets a little jerky in its rapid pace in the beginning but the melodious sarod in the opening credits sets the mood of a Bengali household beautifully.

The final stroke at realism comes when Padukone plays badminton like anything but the daughter of an International champion. She is simply Piku.

Sircar’s Piku is khoob bhalo jhaalmuri. Go eat. Digestion guaranteed.