Review: Akarsh Khurana’s “Karwaan” is a frustratingly bland fare.

[May contain spoilers, many of them.]

It’s not particularly difficult to identify what kind of film Akarsh Khurana’s Karwaan is trying to be. The effort is practically visible. Its characters wear sunglasses picked off a shelf from a designer store. Their clothes are dapper, summery. They travel in a beautiful blue van through some gorgeous, sun-drenched ghats. And their wonderfully trimmed faces (with a touch of make-up) do not show any signs of fatigue or age. Charming. We get a few lines that ruminate over presumably meaningful stuff, like death, life and grief, many of them over a drink of coconut water overlooking streams impossibly blue and lush green trees. We are supposed to swoon, catch these bits of wisdom before they flit through the air and disappear. But the only problem is, we don’t.

Karwaan is a film that proves, among other things, a useful fact: That good-looking films don’t always end up being good cinema. A relationship with a film cannot be built if one doesn't understand from where it originated, why this story needed to be told. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for writing a character who goes on unfounded rants in Hindi whenever he bumps into foreigners, or a coy guy who takes orders (or ‘requests’, if you may, although they don’t sound so) on the phone from a sobbing woman he’s never met. If these are attempts to make us like these two, then one should get the idea that the makers are trying hard to find a footing without straining their imagination too much. And how marvellous to be proved right. For the most part, this film seems to meander through sequences where the characters do things that, I would like to believe, are essential for us to understand them. Only this doesn't happen. These bits seem jarring, alienating us from them. Who are these people? Where do they fit into this world? Why are we supposed to sympathise with them? We don't know. But the film rolls on assuming we do, and so do we.

It's not as if the makers don't try to get us to like them. As if this were a cleverer idea than writing a coherent story, the makers toss in a few painful moments (some unexpectedly hitting their mark) where humour is forced into the story to give it some more juice to keep us invested. These attempts feature a fast-talking character at his brusquest, inviting bewildered looks from the people he comes in contact with. When he’s not jovially expressing his disgust at women wearing ‘skimpy’ clothes (which he does on at least two occasions), he pretends to be mute just so he wouldn’t have to pay for petrol. (Incredible how this callous little detail is played for laughs.)

For all that goes wrong with the film, one thing is for certain: Karwaan’s premise is undoubtedly more interesting than most Hindi films’. Two dead bodies get mixed up, and a software engineer from Bangalore has to travel to Kochi to drop off the ‘wrong’ dead body and pick up his father’s, the ‘right’ one. It could have made a splendid black comedy, but the makers settle for a road film instead. Given that the pleasures of a road film can equal a black comedy’s if done right, this doesn’t seem to be a poor decision at the outset. However, when the characters come into the picture, things do start to look shaky. For one, it often feels as if three different characters written for three different films were plucked out and placed in one, and a blue van was thrown into the mix as an afterthought so that they could be together. These characters have – unsurprisingly – gloomy pasts, and this quirky road trip will – again unsurprisingly – prove to be more eventful and life-changing than they originally thought, wringing their pasts out slowly and allowing them a chance to make peace with them.

If only we were living in the early 2000’s and all of this sounded new. We are, unfortunately, eighteen years into the 21st century. But, this doesn’t deter the makers from approaching it like a brand-new concept, putting together something around the ‘comic’ sequences and ironing it with monologues about life and death to ensure all the elements stay in their place. Half-baked developments are introduced without a good reason. A romantic angle for one character (handled a little insensitively later on) and an encounter with a past flame for another is hardly relevant to the story, which I thought began with a guy trying to arrange for a proper burial for his deceased father from whom he was estranged, but ironically enough these parts are among the film’s most engaging. I am not completely sure the writers intended for it to be so, but much like in life, unpredictability has its own rewards.

What saves the film from being a completely bland fare is the considerable charm of its three leads. (Although it’s been a while since a film has forced Irrfan Khan to ham.) Till the end, Karwaan maintains its distance, its few rewards limited to the surface. I walked away without feeling a thing for any of its characters. That disappointing feeling, I believe, can be cured by a drink of cool coconut water. 

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Review: Neeraj Ghaywan's ambitious "Masaan" marks the the arrival of a noteworthy wielder of the megaphone.

There are films that put on a riveting show of their unconventionality as soon as the clock starts ticking.

In the opening sequence of Neeraj Ghaywan's impressive debut, we see a girl watching porn, taking off to check into a seedy hotel with her boyfriend where their mating is interrupted by the arrival of a bunch of cops who threaten them with shame or worse, death. It is a captivating sequence that is executed with such sensitivity that it promises a whole lot of things promptly, some of which it meets by the end and some of which it doesn't. And the biggest promise it makes is to sidestep blatant exploitation, which in the hands of any other filmmaker would have been inevitable.

And that is how the strongly atmospheric Masaan elevates our expectations in a marvelously rendered opener. It sucks us into its miserable and enticing world, keeps us hooked as it tries to tell an ambitiously woven tale in modern-day Banaras and sagaciously balances themes of redemption and tragedy. There's a lot of plot here that needs telling, two different strands that have to meet at some point and Masaan's triumph is that those two interwoven tales do meet at the point of coherence.

This has been a year of debutants, a year in which Indian cinema finally came of age. The emerging indie movement had never been as visible as it has been this year, and Masaan really is the cherry on the cake. It won two awards, including the FIPRESCI Award earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, and the first thing that struck me when the film ended was how justified its achievements at Cannes were. This is mature, subtle and purposeful storytelling, something that one doesn't expect to see in a debut, and it only gets better as the film progresses. It cuts back and forth with clarity between those two stories, invades the consciences and minds of its characters till they are people we know and understand. The problem with telling two simultaneous stories is, everything can turn muddled in the blink of an eye. We may lose track of the story or simply grow disinterested in the characters. It is too big a risk to undertake, but Ghaywan goes for broke here. He understands his characters, their milieus and the world of which they are a part, and tells his story with great empathy. And I have always strongly believed in one thing: any director who has great empathy for his characters can do no wrong.

As we move on to another story, a really charming romance that bowls you over with its simplicity and spirit, we are made to take notice of the skill of the storytelling. On one hand, we have a story that kicks off gloomily and on the other hand, we have a delightful romance that thrives on optimism. And in the middle of all that, we have passages of poetry narrated by the characters that lends a certain lyricism to the film. Ghaywan's command over the tone is laudable, never bungling in spite of two stories with different flavors. Nitin Baid's editing makes sure the tone remains consistent and never distracting as the film switches between the stories in a determined pattern.

Apart from being a story about redemption and hope, Masaan also manages to be a story of loneliness and the unpredictability of life, with its people seeking closures that their lives are unwilling to give. Like I said, it is all ambition. There is much to soak in, much to pay attention to, much to tell. But Masaan does a great job of cramming great detailing -- right from the clothes the characters don to the way they speak, all reminiscent of the Banaras we know -- tonal shifts and many, many characters. Everything works quite well for the most part. And that's also owning to heartfelt performances from a largely talented cast.

Alas, it has a few flaws. Screenwriter Varun Grover's scrutiny of the different facets of city is beautifully incorporated into the story, thereby creating a place that is almost a character in itself, forgive the hackneyed line. And a long and booming round of applause for cinematographer Avinash Arun, who also debuted a couple of weeks ago with the miraculous Killa. The Banaras in Masaan exudes a tranquility and melancholy that helps a great deal in the telling of the stories. But the stories themselves are paced inconsistently and plotted a tad unconvincingly. In parts, the film is monotonous and predictable. And personally, I found a major plot point too far-fetched to believe. I was expecting it to be treated with a bit more realism.

But these admittedly minor flaws were forgiven when the whole film came together in a nifty tug at the end. What matters is, Masaan is unconventional in the best possible way. It is an earnest effort, an outstanding debut by any standard. Rarely has a story this sprawling been told with such clarity and confidence and maturity. For a film that promised so much, Masaan is memorable. And in all likelihood, one of the better Hindi films of the year.

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Review: Avinash Arun's "Killa" is a mesmerizing examination of childhood.

It is fast turning into a year of debutants. 

So far, we have had Chaitanya Tamhane's Court and M. Manikandan's Kaaka Muttai that have left indelible impressions, that have given us plenty reasons to whoop, that have left us feeling exceedingly optimistic for the future of Indian cinema. That's a good enough reason to celebrate.

But there is one film, one sensational film, that stands out among these gems, the vanquisher. Avinash Arun's profound and intricately constructed debut, Killa, is the film of the year. And I'm not talking about Indian cinema specifically when I proclaim that.

I have always believed that the most difficult of all stories to tell involve deciphering children and their emotions, how their minds function, how they survey the world we live in. It's a complex subject to explore that is often incorrigibly simplified, but when done right, I find that there is no greater joy than looking at the world through the eyes of children. Arun's Killa does exactly what one would look for in a film about children: it presents children as they are. Emotionally complex, eternally buoyant and frequently misunderstood. No falsities, no oversimplification. Only sensitivity. 

It's a quiet, almost meditative and painfully poignant reflection on childhood, the earthshaking distress we feel when we are estranged from our friends, how venting our unhappiness on the world becomes our only source of solace in these times, not realizing that the world already has heaps of problems to deal with in the first place. The balance it manages to strike between humor and poignancy is superlative. Rarely has a debutant demonstrated such tactfulness. It's generously scattered with moments so charming, so impossibly funny -- one of the factors that contributed to the humor is how truthful the shenanigans the kids pull off are -- that I could not resist grinning. It's almost as if we needed reminding that to enjoy a film, it needs to speak to us by telling us something about ourselves, not through disposable gimmicks. 

While Arun takes his time building his world in affectionate detail in the first-half, subtly establishing his characters and the relationships they share, it's in the second-half that the film turns into something more than what initially met the eye. Strained relationships are skillfully and unhurriedly examined in wordless scenes, through mournful glances and furtive smiles, and a boy finally comes of age. In an empathetically crafted sequence, he realizes the worth of having a mother from the unlikeliest of people. A world in which he was a misfit, a home in which he felt isolated become a part of his identity and he gradually comes to accept them as his own. It is in the capturing of this exquisite moment that Arun won my salute. It's a passing moment that is difficult to spot, for it is ever so discreet, but its overpoweringly wistful effect is felt somewhere near the end. It's the kind of moment that turns great films into enduring masterworks.

It only helps that Killa is one gorgeously shot film. The lush hills, mud paths, rusty bridges and blue seas are characters in themselves, being as much parts of the protagonists' lives as the landscapes, contributing a great deal to the film's moody atmosphere. I doffed my hat to Arun's spirited camerawork that engages us swiftly into the small but devotedly composed world. The performances, from even the smallest actors in the briefest roles, are brilliantly multilayered, and the young lot does wonders. They carry the whole film on their shoulders and make it look like a cakewalk. Parth Bhalerao, perhaps the most recognizable actor from the young lot, is particularly miraculous. His brusque Bandya is a character of warmth and goofiness, but he manages to imbue him with a sadness that is hard to describe.

Killa, eventually, is a heartbreaking film. A hushed montage of the people and places we have come to know and care for plays in the final few minutes, and ends with a moment of great hope. In a film that is full of heart, it is the heart it aims at till fade-out. 

It hardly needs pointing out that it is the film to outclass this year.

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Review: Zoya Akhtar's "Dil Dhadakne Do" is a brave attempt to revive a dead genre, but a feeble one.

Zoya Akhtar can be deservingly counted amongst the most exciting filmmakers working in the Hindi film industry today. She has a novel approach, always something interesting to say, beautiful to show, without ever banking on her cast entirely to make sure her audience leaves, content. Her contributions to her films are evident, even when she manages to cast prominent actors even in the smallest of roles, splurging on the minutest details. While her miraculous debut, Luck By Chance, was an affectionate, bravely grim and always insightful exploration of the functioning of the Hindi film industry, it was her second film, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, that she made known the kind of cinema she believes in. It is classic escapist cinema; glistening and scenic locales, a barrage of good-looking people at every corner of the frame who wear fashionable clothes but are strangely alienated in their own lives. 

Dil Dhadakne Do is a contemporary rehash of the genre that Sooraj Barjatya made his decades ago, but it suffers from the same problems that Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did. It has a troop of affluent but mysteriously unlikable characters who say dull things, do dull things, have dull problems and grumble throughout the film in the hopes of solving them, but all of this against the backdrop of a lovely country. It doesn't help their cases much, I'm afraid, that these problems are boringly predictable, and neither does it help our case because our narrator here is a dog.

Dil Dhadakne Do kicks off with a voiceover explaining the milieu of each of our four protagonists, and setting up the plot that will go precisely haywire in the next 170 minutes. In the opening minutes, Akhtar cleverly stresses on the problems of each character without overdoing it, and we quickly have a clear picture of what's going on their minds. As the story progresses and finally boards a plush yacht, more and more characters join in, crowding the story as one would expect it to, but each character, each relationship is established rather skillfully. Romance -- furtive, open, expressive, subdued, developing, decaying -- is at the core of the story. People are either falling in love or out of it all over the place, and it gets on one's nerves at a point when it is hard to keep track who is chasing whom. But beside the multiple love angles here, there's also the familial problems that plague the family at the heart of all this. The family in question has a patriarch who is a millionaire but struggling to keep his company afloat, a self-made millionaire daughter who is -- I found this rather interesting -- among the world's ten best entrepreneurs as ranked by Forbes (that's a bit tall, innit?) but who is -- ouch! -- snubbed and overlooked by both her in-laws and parents, and a son who is the heir to the fortune but who wants to do nothing but ride planes. Of course, realism is not something to be found here.

As mentioned before, the story follows the same trajectory that Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara did three years ago, only with more simplified characters. It is hard to invest into their troubles emotionally, because these are not characters whom we love or empathize with but the story develops assuming that we are already buying into their grief. That is a major blunder. 

Until intermission, Dil Dhadakne Do is predictable but reasonably diverting, and the set-up promises a potentially fun second-half. But post-intermission, the story crumbles like a sand castle in a tornado.

There is a limit to how far one can stretch their story till it goes topsy-turvy, and how whiny the characters can get in successive scenes. But this limit is challenged so brashly, it becomes doubly difficult to care about anything any longer. The outcome of each parallel thread can be seen from a mile away, yet we are made to watch as each character struggles to cope with the decaying relationships in their lives. What was foreseen as a potentially amusing set-up swiftly deteriorates into a cluttered mess. Oh, where did the subtlety disappear? It vanishes completely, and everything goes -- painfully -- downhill from there. But the saving grace comes in the form of an adeptly executed scene where empowerment of women is broached. It is a shining star in the phase of the film where homilies on marriage and children are delivered at every turn. We will gladly lap it up.

The performances are nothing to speak of, except Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah and Ranveer Singh who give performances so earnest, it manages to salvage the film marginally. But what salvation can be achieved in a film that promised so much, yet achieved so little?

In films that tackle dysfunctional families, it is necessary to create quirky characters that are genuinely affable and earn our sympathies, characters whom we can envision as or hope to be real people. Dil Dhadakne Do lacks that. And with an ending that is utterly over-the-top but thankfully not prolonged, it only becomes harder to care for these chicly-dressed but hollow mortals. 

This is not a bad film. It has a few bits here and there that are amusing, and a clever voiceover narration that is often introspective. But a handsomely-mounted film cannot redeem certain shortcomings. And the shortcomings are too many to turn a blind eye to. Reviving a dead genre isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it needs to be done right to be effectual. This simply is not.

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Review : Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida" is melancholic and unforgettable.

Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida is a film of mystique; there's nothing exotic about it, but its potency is astonishing. Often, in film, we've been on numerous trips with a character who has lived a fabricated life and who naively digs into their past in search of the truth, and the bleak surprises await them. How good this kind of film eventually turns out to be hinges on how startling the revelations are, and how profoundly we let them hassle us. 

In Ida's case, the revelations are more dramatic than disquieting, but the sheer fluidity of its storytelling makes it an indelible experience. 

In spirit, it channels Denis Villeneuve's stunning debut Incendies, a singularly harrowing tale about a pair of twins who unmask their dead mother's cryptic past, but the comparison stops there. Pawlikowski's handling of the material is much more understated in stark contrast to Villeneuve's brutally frank modus operandi. There is no shock value, there are no loose threads. He sticks to narrating the story with as little pontificating as possible, without digressing and without emphasizing much on the disclosures. It's the characters he aims to create. And with characters so humongously, delicately multi-layered, how can one not be intrigued? On a road-trip with these two baffling female protagonists, we virtually decipher the unspoken subtleties of the human mind, and how it reacts to certain muted afflictions.

Ida is a bare film; scarce characters govern its plot, the exchanges between them are terse and the wintery landscape of Poland the film is set against makes it look dismally frigid and cramped. It's a film shot in gorgeously gloomy black-and-white, a chic touch, and scored unassumingly that complements its appearance. The imagery is aesthetic, of course; it chronicles a distinct story of its own, of post-war Poland and of nostalgia-swamped glimpses into a world we have only read about, a resourceful supplement in a film where dialogue is kept to a minimum to amplify the obscurity of its characters. And the performances (Agata Kulesza, in particular, is fabulous) are exacting and poignant. 

In the end, when the stirring revelations are done and dusted with, Pawlikowski takes Ida a step further. He proceeds to scrutinize how it has swayed his characters, exploring their state of mind with dedication and deliberation that puts Ida in the league of the best films of the year. The final half-hour is an act of reaffirming why it is a film that stands out in a stream of other films alike. Can a weak rebellion against a life of illusion diminish the harsher versions of the truth? Pawlikowski unrelentingly asks this question several times in his perusal of his lead character, but it echoes loudest in the film's dying minutes.

Ida is an expressionistic gem of a film about self-identity and forlornness that warrants lengthy reflection.

Review : Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is a worthy sprint through adolescence.

"Coming-of-age" is a genre in film that is often dismissed as being too facile, but has more variations than what we usually surmise. In American cinema specifically, we have the kind that John Hughes served with generous helpings of humor coupled with disarming candor (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), the kind that John Singleton showcased with such sensitivity, starkness and cognition (Boyz N the Hood) and the kind that was brutally, uncomfortably real and dour, the perverse sort that made everyone descry the obvious talents of Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale).

Which brings us to Richard Linklater, the crackerjack who has shaped a reputation of being the modern master of the genre, whose Dazed and Confused doggedly solidified that assertion. And the good news is, Boyhood, while not being his best, is certainly a doozy experiment that is emotionally productive.

It's wondrous for the umpteenth time how Linklater cheekily manages to find allure in the ordinaries of life, in our conversations, hushed and yelled, the exhibition of our suppressed emotions, and how in the end we are only a minuscule part of a larger cosmos. Observing a boy from the ages of seven to eighteen, scrutinizing his conduct in a life he never chose as he grows up is a figurative, audacious move, and who better to do this than Linklater? Time is his muse. And time has never looked so benign in any film of his.

The approach is casual. The conversations invoke an overpowering sense of deja vu, riddled with dry, throwaway humor and are nailed with an unassuming earnestness that is hard to define. Really, it's a skin Linklater is comfortable walking around in, and he hurtles through twelve years without missing a beat. His Mason is a figure of familiarity, perhaps because he is, in many ways, a specimen that represents each and every one of us, and that makes Boyhood an engaging chronicle. We are looking at us, a more realized version of ourselves in a film that aims for nothing more except bringing to us a picture of what lies beyond what we see in the mirror.

However, Boyhood also feels like a rushed film. I only wish it wasn't so eager to make Mason grow up, and then slacken the pace so that the "childhood" part seemed like a blaze in a reasonably long film. But this is only a minor niggle. Cramming adolescence in a film is never a cinch, especially in one that has been in the making for a little over a decade, and, rationally speaking, there are going to be loose ends that were forsaken at some point. Linklater's directorial flourishes are completely absent as well, giving the film its plain vanilla look. He was never one who would be remembered for his skill in handling a camera. But I wonder, would Boyhood have been the same if Linklater's expressive touches were present? It's a document of an ordinary soul, would visual artistry have killed it or enhanced it?

The selling point of the film, the gimmick that has irreversibly glued itself to it, will place it in my memory for a long time. It's an experiment of towering warmth, even though it doesn't seek to tell a story. It's anything but philosophical, more willing to talk about life than find meaning in it. And, remarkable as it seems, a surprisingly simple film.

On his excursion through adolescence, Linklater's Boyhood is a collage of the little moments he saw as he whizzed past them.

Review : Vikas Bahl's "Queen" is impressively aberrant.

One of the pitfalls of being in the birth country of the Hindi film industry is that we are often fed a sturdy diet of satires pretending to be socially relevant films. That's the case with Gulaab Gang, a film which I gleefully put into my collection called Too Bad, Didn't Whistle! without even watching it. The collection consists of films in which the director had given the audience plenty of time to whistle and cheer, but the only sound that emanated from the theatre came from about a hundred people sticking out their tongues and blowing. 

But I'm not here to talk about Gulaab Gang. What, you think I'd go for a movie in which women beat wussies from Wasseypur black, blue and pink with sticks, nutsos? Oh, groan. 

No, instead, I'm here to talk about this little gem I witnessed today. In a clutter of Hindi films that tackle self-discovery as their primary subject, this one took the genre and put it up there, right where English Vinglish is. And believe me, this genre is abused flagrantly way too often, because the general idea of self-discovery in the Hindi film industry is finding out that you can become a fashion model after all. This niggling norm was smashed to pieces by Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish, a funny, moving story about a mother trying to learn English to impress her family. It's a film that left me grinning stupidly from ear to ear, and that's the only time I like to look stupid. And a film which brings out that in me is something special.

Queen, thankfully, chugs down that unfamiliar path. I took a ginormous swig of the soda next to me in relief when I learned that. Such promise in the first ten minutes is rare for a Hindi film. 

You know, I'll tell you something straight up. I was never a fan of Kangana Ranaut, never. I never watched a lot of her films, barring a few odd comme ci comme ca whits of her filmography. And I used to deplore her choices of films. Really, what choices can you expect from a woman whose ex-boyfriends' list reads Adhyayan Suman and Aditya Pancholi? But she was always a fine actress, you know. I won't dispute that.

Queen is Ranaut at her assiduous, charming, peppy best. Right from the opening sequence in which she curiously gazes at her aunts practicing dance steps to the final buoyant walk back home, her Rani doesn't miss a beat. It's a flawless performance which lights up the screen, scrupulously detailed and earnestly acted out. Now, that's called self-discovery, chums. Like the character, Ranaut may have just discovered her actor self. Whoo!

Interestingly enough, the facade here is that some truly comical moments conceal a revenge drama that Queen was rearing to become. A moralistic Delhi girl is dumped a day before her wedding by her flinty fiance, an anglophile who wears sunglasses in a coffee shop. Yeah, that bastardly. The agony the poor lassie feels knows no bounds. She starves herself while being locked up in a room, cries her eyes out and desperately searches for her phone whenever it makes some sound. And in that wretched state, she wants to scoot off to see Paris and Amsterdam. We do too. Gobsmacking!

The story here is spunkily minimalist, as is its treatment. But in the bare story, we find those tiny moments to revel in. Bahl's attention to detail is astonishing, as he carefully daubs the minutest of nuances to his story. Like the dumping sequence after which the finace dusts the henna bits off the table. Or the sequence in which our lady talks about her honeymoon plans in a worried whisper, or risk her elders to get the wind of them. The touches are snazzy if not crucial, and somewhere, I presume, Dibakar Banerjee, the detail maven of a lackadaisical industry, is feeling unusually antsy.

But, you know, it's a kick to learn that the script wasn't written by a travel agency eager to dip their hands into a tourist film. We don't get to see great visuals of the city as Bahl makes it about his protagonist, not about her travels. And about the mad clan she meets. Oho! The Lord Divine is good to us sometimes.

One of the film's most endearing scenes is Rani dancing to a Hindi song in a drunken stupor in a Paris nightclub. After getting an earful from her boyfriend for dancing at her nuptials, it's oddly hilarious and moving to watch her giving the Parisians a quick lesson in dancing the Indian way; lend your feet to the beats. Somewhere, it's a quiet celebration of a free spirit. Wasn't that what Bahl wanted to achieve? Well, he sure did. Only this is one of the film's minor achievements. Oh, la la!

So, you might be thinking how perfect I'm making the film sound. Well, it was, till the second half kicked in. Oh, no! Yes, yes, the curse of the second half has befallen many a film, buds. Not that the film has any galling melodrama to sew its weak pieces together, but what irked me was how it often sloppily resorted to the stereotypes in the post-interval span. So, you have the protagonist feeding golgappas to hungry people in Amsterdam, and they scarf it up so much that the other stall owners lose their thriving patrons. And what may have caused our nun to take such a drastic step, you may ask? Well, it's some sort of cooking competition she participates in there. Oho, mistakes happen. Tsk, golgappas of all dishes. And in all this, Bahl still finds time to show us her first kiss. Bejesus!

But the mishits are quick and relatively painless here. Phew!

I haven't seen Aisha, so I have no clue how Lisa Haydon fared in her nettlesome debut. But in a film of revelations, she is one of the major ones. Her performance is no match for Ranaut's, and yet she's fantastic. And gorgeous. Sigh.

I find it hard to digest the fact that Bahl, the crackerjack Bahl, was half the brains behind a film called Chillar Party. I haven't seen it, most probably because the name didn't sound even remotely appealing to me, but this is a strong second feature, cineastes. Though not consistently impressive, Queen is feisty, like its enchanting protagonist, and dawdles long enough to make a strong impression.

Here's a high-five. Now for those golgappas.

Review : Imtiaz Ali's "Highway" is charming codswallop.

You know there's something terribly wrong when the abductee starts finding her abductor cute.

Oh, no! Oh, yes.

Welcome, Stockholm syndrome, to a barbaric, bucolic and beautiful India you never knew. It's an oddly effective subject to build a plot around, and who better to do it than Imtiaz Ali? The curly-haired filmmaker serves ravishing road-trips with oodles of romance, a hint of zing and a whole lot of originality. It's a done deal, boss. He gets straight into it : we have a damsel-in-distress bride-to-be who is whisked away by brutal baboons right from under her sissy fiance's nose.

Oh, dear. We sympathize. And her ordeal has just begun.

The twenty-something girl is an adventurous flake. She cries, weeps and adjusts quietly, fends off possible abusers and any kind of human contact. She tries to run, but returns fairly quickly. The kidnappers are astounded, and so are we. It's the beginning of a very promising fairytale.

Imitiaz Ali is arguably one of the finest filmmakers in the Hindi film industry. His ideas are habitually avant-garde that impress and depress in equal measure. But his love for the road remains rare. Watch any film of his, any film, and you'll find that he has sneaked in a sub-plot involving a journey on the long, desolate stretches of the road wherein he can freely indulge in his obsession. And when you have a virtuoso cinematographer by your side, surveying the badlands with his camera, why not join him?

The first part of Highway is some of Ali's darkest work yet. It's a deeply personal film, one that he ached to make all along but had to back out because of its experimental nature. And he had shown us flashes of how grim his ideas can get in the loathsome Rockstar, where Nargis Fakhri tried to masquerade stand-up comedy as acting. My trust in Ali faded slightly after Rockstar, having somewhat liked his previous efforts. Highway, well, makes it worse.

The girl is chatty, friendly and a nudnik. We like her when she makes demands of her own. The kidnappers remain astounded. This gives the director ample space to infuse the tense setting with a few quick laughs and he does so beautifully. The leader of this gang grimaces and barks at the carefree angel, like he's noticed a person like this for the first time. Maybe he has. Funny, hasn't he ever seen Jab We Met, Ali's most successful film to date? Because the girl he has abducted is an extension of the lead character of that film. Just saying.

The girl, we find out, has a filthy rich daddy. Well, doesn't every character who is kidnapped in a Hindi film? Anyway, the desperadoes know they're in big trouble. They run without any real plan. We follow them. We keep following them till the lights come on and the credits roll.

Wait - what? Where is the damn plot?

Uh, it isn't there.

So, so, so what was the point of the film? Yeah, that's a head-scratcher. Because the industry rarely doles out great road films - and here's the finger to those who say Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is a great road film - so surely a director would think twice before scuppering it?  Nope, not in this case. The first half of the film had me on my feet, applauding its newfangled take on the orthodox road movies and buffing it with a fresh coat of inventiveness. Ali makes no mistake. He creates tender and often funny moments between the two leads, charms us with his quirky, peppy banter and his neatly-written characters.

Alia Bhatt, who vastly underplayed her cliched character in her debut, shines as Veera Tripathy, the pathetic lass. Since Ali has confessed to filming the movie without a proper script, Bhatt had a lot of room to make her character memorable, and she has done it. She has done it. In an unexpected scene, Veera tells her unsuspecting abductor a disturbing tale of incest she underwent at the hands of her uncle and the horrors that unfold in her house she doesn't want to go back to. It's a doozy. I shit you not, the whole theater went utterly silent during that one scene. It's a quiet sign of triumph, compadres.

Randeep Hooda is an underrated actor. The thespian, who made his debut a decade ago, is up to snuff as Mahabir Bhati, the pitiless abductor. Though he's overpowered by the young girl's obvious allure, and spends most of the time grimacing and sulking, it's uplifting to watch how he warms up to his abductee.

The second half is Ali concurring to the audience's tastes. Seriously, what went wrong there, chum? Dear, dear. You really don't need to show a hint of romance between a pair unlikely to fall in love. Because then, some people, like me, find it hard to keep their eyes open. Yawn. They smile. Yawn. They joke. Yawn. Look, they build a home together! Yawn. She screams. Ho-hum. The end. Huh?

But there are flashes of brilliance that show us what kind of a film this could have been. Like the scene in which Veera makes one of her kidnappers buy her a CD consisting of English songs and dances to it with him in the middle of the Kashmiri terrains. Or like a scene in which her appreciation of a tumbledown house invites mild sarcasm when her kidnapper asks her why she's so fascinated with the ruins. There are little moments like these which make it impossible to dislike the film. Sigh.

Oh, gee. I didn't realize this is fast turning into an ambivalent review. Damn!

Alright, I didn't like it. Why the nitpicking review, you ask? Because I'm not too fond of movies that do disservice to their lead actors and thwack me on the face because I expected too much from them.

Essay: The "Before" Trilogy : Is it under-appreciated?

I'm not a big sucker for romantic movies, especially if they involve a lot of drama. Comedy? Fine, I'll sit through it without grumbling even if the jokes don't get to me. You know why? Because my perception of romantic movies has been bludgeoned over the years. I've noticed that movies often delight me boundlessly by their observations, not by their creations. And what do you get to see in a romantic movie? What? You get a boy and a girl, you get forbidden love and you get a happy ending. And, if the director's got enough balls, he opts for a tragic denouement. That's the hackneyed romance that makers often dye and coat and puff right in your eyes. Smug, ain't it?

One day, I got wind of this movie called Before Sunrise, which was what you'd usually call a movie with a minimalist plot. I could probably describe the story to you in a line but what the movie really was can't be. I checked out the trailer, a really promising one, and I decided to grab a seat and watch it. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of Richard Linklater back then though I really dug up his works after I saw Before Sunrise.

Before Sunrise was the ancient yarn of a boy who meets a girl. On a train. Going to Vienna. He's American. She's French. They talk. That's the story.

This probably sounds dumb in your head, doesn't it? And yet, here I am, talking about it like its hot canard. Yeah, go ahead, call me a loony, but the magic of Before Sunrise does not lie in what you see but it lies in what you hear. Richard Linklater, like some dark wizard that he is, takes an absurdly simple story, twists and turns it into a living, breathing firecracker of a film that's at once fluffy and honest. Before Sunrise isn't all fluff, no sir, but it's a movie that braves to put forward some thoughts that you'd rather not think aloud, especially not in front of others, but Jesse and Celine speak them aloud for us. They're still kids but they are kids who understand what life is, what feelings are. They know it, they have experienced it, they are experiencing it. And we follow them during the time their thoughts animate on-screen as they stroll on the beautiful streets of Vienna, which doubles up as a comfort character. Never since Roman Polanski's masterful Chinatown has a movie had me gaping for every word of the conversations. They sound extemporized, like Linklater thought it'd be cool to throw in a boy and a girl in Vienna and film what they talk about. They go places, yeah, they meet people and they see some of the city. They're divided in their opinions, honest in their answers and casual in their behavior. There's romantic tension between them and it's handled sensitively. It's found gold this, because I haven't seen a romance movie quite like it.

Until I saw its sequel Before Sunset.

Thank God for small mercies, I got a chance to watch Before Sunset right after I completed Before Sunrise. Because I pity those poor sods who had to wait nine whole, long, agonizing years to hear them talk again. Jesse and Celine grew on me, their thoughts arrested my fascination like no other characters' ever have. I met them again, this time in Paris. Yeah, life went on for them but their notions hadn't matured yet. That part is still ripe, much to my delight. It was like meeting old friends you hadn't met in a long time and now you can't wait to hear their side of what went on for them after their last meting with you. Jesse was now a successful writer doing a book-tour. His first book was about a girl he had met whilst on a train and the one night he spent with her in Vienna. And the girl finds him in Paris nine years later. He's married, she's not. He's tranquil, she's not. They're still kids in their own way, like in a scene where Celine jokingly shows him the finger when he contradicts her conception on a subject. He has eighty minutes till a flight out of there. She invites him for a coffee, he agrees. All good, all excited. But seriously, we get eighty fucking minutes? If you have seen Before Sunrise, you'd know that eighty minutes is scant. Way too scant.

Ah, but it's still eighty minutes of pure bliss! Linklater outdoes himself yet again, creating a romance like no other. One may argue that Before Sunset is no romance. True, it's not, it's more like a rendezvous in Paris. Attraction is mostly absent this time around, sadly, though I had not expected one. One again we're an audience to a witty, allusive and strikingly intelligent talk about life and other things. Eighty minutes later, Jesse and Celine are a tease. Linklater joshes us by fading out at the precise moment when things get critical. The anguish, the fucking anguish!

Fortunately for me, nine years later, they're going to meet again. Some have already met them halfway across the globe but I haven't. Before Midnight is going to be the final chapter in the trilogy. It's an accomplished piece of work, no less, squashed from a one-line idea. It's takes a special talent to make three engaging, astute movies having the same characters talking more or less about the same things but being perky and waggish every single time you bump into them. If we're lucky - and I really hope we are - Linklater will find time to make a small movie on them again. Maybe how they spend a Sunday?

One of the many things that unexpectedly pops up in my mind when I talk about the Before trilogy is - why hasn't it been nominated for an Academy Award yet? I mean, yeah, it has, but nominating Before Sunset for the Academy Award For Best Adapted Screenplay is more like a given, you know, a certainty. Why has it been shivved for Best Picture or Best Director? It's good enough for either one, don't you think? I may be barking because I'm a major fan of the trilogy but when I change perspectives, trade my place for a regular movie-going guy, I don't contradict myself. It deserves appreciation, more than just a single nomination. Now, I don't mean to be biased but when I look at the biggest trilogy of all-time, Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, I find that Linklater's Before deserves a place right beside it. It may not be a trilogy of a similar scale and grandiose but it does achieve what it sets out to, like Jackson's. It delivers to us an utterly magnificent piece of cinema that engages us and derides our courage, our imagination. And that's something very hard to come by.

I do hope that Before Midnight will be that film which breaks the malediction. If it does, I wouldn't say that one part of the trilogy has won. I'd say it won the Oscar that it wholly deserved for eighteen years.