23 | March | 2007 | MADRAS INK.

Life has turned upside down already and we’re hardly through with the first phase of the That Four Letter Word rollout. The summer heat is only making things all the more hectic.

And, that’s because I’ve decided to stay indoors during the day and work nights. So please don’t bother calling me anytime before lunch. The only time I get to sleep is between six a.m. and noon.

We’ve had trade enquiries from around the world, proposals for two other films this year, one of which we’re scheduled to shoot this summer. Thankfully, a friend’s chipping in to handle distribution.

I desperately need a holiday to go finish the script. I think I will manage to take the next week off under the pretext of doing a travel feature.

But before I take off, there’s so much temptation all around. There’s World Cup cricket, there are a dozen new DVDs lying around waiting to be watched, there’s ‘Heroes,’ ‘Lost,’ ‘Prison Break,’ (second season) and ‘My Name is Earl’ to catch up on, there’s the Roof Top Film Festival this weekend, there are meetings lined up with investment consultants this being the year end and all, a couple of other script-discussion meetings and I need to do all of this without reducing the time I spend with my darling girlfriend. So even if the personal blog isn’t updated too often, do drop in at Sudermovies. Given the volume of movies I watch and the nature of my job, I don’t have a choice but to discuss films.

I’m looking forward to the Roof Top Film Festival. From what I heard from Sagaro, we had an interesting line-up of films — a couple of low budget indie films from America (Primer and Hard Candy have been shortlisted) and at least a couple of first low-budget films by master directors (there’s a choice between George Lucas’s THX 1138, Christopher Nolan’s ‘Following,’ Roman Polanski’s ‘Knife in the Water,’ Steven Spielberg’s ‘Duel‘.

Would be good to watch these again and discuss them with an enthusiastic bunch of movie buffs who have signed up for the all-nighter movie marathon. Given that most of those who have registered are young movie buffs and aspiring filmmakers, I think films like these will go a long way to inspire them to make films.

It’s seven in the morning, already an hour into my bedtime. Pardon the rambling.

Chenquieh!

What is otherwise a barely bearable trip, goes off the road when Meghna Gulzar loses her balance between realism and willing suspension of disbelief. Though she does present a sensitive, realistic take on newly wed couples on their honeymoon, the filmmaker betrays her sensibility by forcing a rather filmy, gravity-defying cliffhanger on her multiplex audience.

It is not just the climax that is symptomatic of the director’s struggle to marry two sensibilities – the urban and the small-town – maybe because her central characters are the epitome of modern day sensitivity and small town conservatism respectively.

But then, how dramatic can a conflict between sensitivity and conservatism get? The foreign-bred Abhay (Fardeen Khan) understands his bride’s predicament. He knows his small town-raised wife Ritika (Esha Deol) needs time before she would let him touch her, let alone share the bed. He’s willing to wait. She’s happy that he understands her. So far, so good.

To her credit, Meghna Gulzar fleshes out the first act with ease, punctuating the interludes of the newly married couple with a breezy song or two (Pritam does full justice to Gulzar’s lyrics) while exploring the distance and dynamics between the strangers bound by matrimony. Also during the first act, she also introduces us to the other couples on a holiday, and though this juxtaposition initially seems like a good idea, the sub-plots slow down the central one. By the time we get through with the second and get into the third, the bride does test our patience. Or maybe it’s the actress.

To be fair to her, though miscast, Esha Deol delivers a well-nuanced career-best and Fardeen Khan banks on natural charm with restrained underplaying.

Of the other four couples, Satish Shah and Kirron Kher are adorable with their everyday quibbles. Perizaad Zorabian is once again typecast as the free-spirited girl opposite the hunky Bikram Saluja, while Sadia Siddique and Mukul Dev as the platonic childhood sweethearts manage to bring a smile to your face. Raj Zutshi buries himself under Lonely Planet for most of his screen time as his companion rattles of lines in fake American accent.

Though you connect to some of these characters instantly, the sub-plots here, compared to ‘Honeymoon Travels,’ hardly spring any surprises.

If ‘Honeymoon Travels’ was a macro-level look at relationships, ‘Just Married’ is a more intimate, microscopic look at the space shared between man and woman under the institution of marriage.

Comparisons are inevitable not only because of the timing of release of these two films but also because the sensitivity lent to the plot by two different woman filmmakers. The difference emerges in the sensibility employed.

If Reema drove ‘Honeymoon Travels’ with a classy, urban, romantic-comedy sensibility and stopped for a brief lecture (Shabhana Azmi challenging the sanctity of marriage), Meghna drives all the way to the edge of the cliff to force some melodrama to please the masses and swear by its sanctity (as discoursed by the senior couple, Kirron Kher and Sathish Shah).

If Reema’s cinema branches out of Farhan Akhtar’s, Meghna’s seems like an ode to Sooraj Barjatya.

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Archive For March 23rd, 2007

One helluva summer!

Just Married: Sequel to Vivah?