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REVIEW Three is a Crowd Like all Hindi films, here too it happened one night. By Anupama Chopra Movie: DIL KYA KARE
In her 1973 book, Fear of Flying, Erica Jong extols the virtues of the "zipless" sexual encounter. That is, a short, anonymous encounter in, say a train. You get on, make love with a handsome stranger without saying a word, he/she gets off at the next station, end of story. But what if the stranger got off at the next station pregnant. Then you have a Hindi movie. Dil Kya Kare (DKK) is the Bollywood twist on Fatal Attraction. Only, your one-night stand doesn't return to boil the family pet. She wrecks your marriage instead.
Enter a mysterious stranger, Nandita (Kajol), who has clandestine meetings with Neha sans permission. Turns out, Neha is adopted and Nandita is Neha's real mother. The universe is now off-kilter but peace still prevails. However, when Anand and Nandita come face to face, all hell breaks loose. Because Anand is Neha's real father. A long time ago, on a train journey, he rescued Nandita from some rapists and then fell into bed with her. They didn't even find out each other's name. But sex in Hindi movies means always having to say you're sorry. It's Masoom territory and Jha navigates well part of the way. Emotions are well-crafted and despite the potential for hysterics, controlled. Jha's take on marriage is more natural than Bollywood's standard sanitised version. But DKK lacks emotional conviction. Anand, besotted with his wife, suddenly gets all moony-eyed over Nandita just because she's bore him a child. Nandita, who only stopped on her way to Beneras to have a look at her daughter, seems to have permanently missed the train. And a heart-broken Kavita is soon goaded into asking for divorce by her favourite fashion accessory, Chandrachur, a college friend who always hangs around. Jha can't match the emotional finesse of Masoom. His performers are competent -- Chaudhary, big on lipstick and histrionics is as excellant as Kajol -- but his writing is flawed. And DKK remains, a well-crafted but half-baked soap opera. A lyrical account of a girl's dreams Movie: KAIREE (The Raw Mango) By Madhu Jain
Understated, his camera lingers, often silently, on streams, fallen leaves, papers scattering in the wind and the chapalled feet of the husband (Mohan Gokhale in his last performance) going up and down the stairs. And, of course, the expressive faces of the child and her Taani mausi. Yogita Deshmukh as the young orphan is a natural. But the surprise performance is Shilpa Navalkar's as the aunt who tries to create a world of beauty and hope for her niece -- despite the hopelessness of her own life. The scent of a raw mango or the sun's rays filtering through the leaves of a tree -- or even the unseen yet forever lurking peacock are intimations of a better world. Commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (the first in its series of feature films), the film conveys the message of hope and a better tomorrow for the girl child, yet avoids the pitfalls of propagandist film making. Nothing preachy about it. |
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DKK is the yuppie Hum Aapke Hain Kaun except here the wife, Kavita (Mahima
Chaudhary), wears Tommy Hilfiger, the architect husband, Anand (Ajay Devgan), drives a
swanky car and the daughter, Neha, learns dancing Shiamak Davar style. Mobile phones,
treadmill, blue, frosted glass vases -- it is a perfect universe. Obviously, there's going
to be trouble soon. 
When Palekar first told
Marathi writer G. A. Kulkarni that he wanted to make a film based on his short story,
Kulkarni advised him to stop thinking of words and use the language of cinema instead.
Unusual advice from a man of letters. But so apt, as this beautiful and moving film shows.
Told from the point of view of a 10-year-old girl who goes to live with her sensitive aunt
and her brutish uncle after she loses both her parents, the film reveals Palekar at his
lyrical best.