Bold exploration of marriage, but...

Johnson Thomas

An official adaptation of ‘The Lovers’, starring Debra Winger, the movie takes us on an intimate journey through a crumbling marriage that began on love and seems to be ending on boredom, the craving for attention, extra-marital affairs and lack of commitment.

Shirsha Guha Thakurta makes her debut with the help of scriptwriters Suprotim Sengupta and Eisha Chopra, taking bits and pieces of the original story of a disaffected American couple and transporting it to Mumbai. She begins her narrative about the 30-plus Bengali-South Indian couple with Groucho Marx’s quote, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?’So you know right from the start that this marriage has gone sour. The two, who began their married life as runaway lovebirds after three years of courtship, now 12 years later, find themselves searching for that elusive ‘love’ outside the institution they built from scratch.

At first, we see Kavya Ganeshan (Vidya Balan) canoodling with Vikram (Sendhil), a famous photographer based in the US, and Anirudh Bannerjee (Pratik Gandhi) coo-chi-cooing with Nora (Ileana D’Cruz), a wannabe model and actress. Then comes the revelation — Nora and Vikram are basically holding their breath in the hope that Kavya and Anirudh will willingly let go off the chains that bind them together. But, as expected, complications arise.

It may not be an original, but the film is definitely a bold exploration of marriage. We see the couple, though living together as a disaffected husband and wife, already making a grab for love outside. There are no fault lines drawn, just emotions being expended because neither believes the other is capable of subterfuge. The narrative adopts a matter-of-fact tone, it’s largely non-judgmental and plays out in a fairly humourous (even if it is in a bad taste at times) fashion.

Kavya’s justification about searching for love because her reserved, autocratic father was not demonstrative enough doesn’t ring true though.

We get to know limited back stories of Kavya and Anirudh, but nothing at all about Vikram or Nora. So it does begin to feel like the two were rather expendable… which in turn sets in predictability about where this story is going. While some of the conversations are interesting, much of it seems banal. Nora’s gift of an upright piano to Anirudh when their relationship is going south, doesn’t hit the right notes. Was she making a point? We never know because her explanation is kept vague and the piano gets forgotten in the melee that arises out of the discovery of infidelities. There’s not much of a hint of satire here.

The camerawork shows all the warts. The editing could have been tighter. The extended runtime feels as strained as the marriage it depicts.

Even Kavya and Anirudh’s expression of hurt and angst appears rather restrained. At a time when they should be aiming for each other’s throats, we hear them talk about food and throw around a few utensils. Kavya yells that she always hated his favourite dish ‘begun posto’, while Anirudh takes out his frustration on her steel utensils, which he claims he never liked. Imagine, the couple were not even aware of their integral likes and dislikes in all these years.

The mood goes from interesting to indulgent after their Ooty visit for her grandfather’s funeral. The writers fail to make whatever happens later on, believable. The background guitar music makes the experience more personal but fails to lift the narrative to anything entertaining.

It’s ultimately the performances that touch you. Vidya is excellent as Kavya, lending her a reality that is palpable, and Pratik Gandhi does well to just stay believable even though he doesn’t fit the bill of being an equal-age husband of a 38-year-old. Neither Sendhil nor Ileana get a chance to leave a mark here. Thakurta manages to give a decent account of her directorial skills, even though the result may not be entirely satisfactory.