Movie: Kuch Luv Jaisa
Cast: Shefali Shah, Rahul Bose, Sumeet Raghavan
Written and Directed by: Barnali Ray Shukla
Rating: **
On paper, this must have sounded like a great theme -- to showcase the amazing talents of Shefali Shah, who plays a disappointed housewife whose husband has forgotten her identity, not to forget her birthday.
She sets off on a day of journey with a mysterious stranger, and discovers reasons to love herself. Wish we could love her as much as we want to. Wish we could share her enthusiasm to seize the day. The story telling, sad to say, distances us from the housewife's crazy confusions.
The idea of a woman's 24-hour voyage into self-discovery needed more careful packaging and a mastery over the emotions that she has to pour out into the script to give the sensitivity that it aspires to achieve.
While Barnali Ray Shukla's writing sparkles, she is incapable to put the situations on movie in that inviting spiral of compelling situations that would make the housewife's predicament appealing and empathetic.
Once we get over the initial enthusiasm of watching the housewife overcome her initial boredom, the story pretty much settles down to letting the protagonist find her own centre in a story that doesn't quite know how to get going. The narration moves forward in fits and starts.
Some episodes hold our attention for the effervescence that Shefali Shah brings into them. Here's an actress who is always in command of the material provided to her. Often we have seen Shefali go beyond the necessities of the script.
On the other hand, that isn't a luxury afforded to this consummate actress on this occasion, as we see her struggling with dialogues and scenes that seem to have been written with much warmth but little passion.
What sees the movie through is the intelligent friendship that Rahul Bose establishes with his co-star. This is a road movie with the traffic in a state of chaos. We know the neglected housewife Madhu is out for a day of rebellious adventure in the company of a rude gangster who has just been betrayed by his girlfriend. Beyond that, we aren't really allowed to care for the two misfits.
By the time the two unlikely companions reach their destination, the plot has reached a dead end. Ironically, the film's best sequences come towards the end. It's a stolen moment between the mother and her disobedient teenaged daughter in the rest-room where the older woman wants to know if her daughter has ever had sex.
'Kucch Luv Jaisa' is a disappointing movie about an unhappy life. It is littered with situations that had the potential to ignite into furious displays of intuitive intimacy. The moments are generally wasted in trying to appear lively, stylish and savvy.
A bit more of authenticity and intimacy would have gone a long way into making this movie on unrealized dreams blossom into a work of ambrosial possibilities.
The showy songs on the soundtrack serve as a reminder of how much this movie craved for more occasions to cheer the housewife's efforts to rise above her deadlocked survival.
Shefali takes the character as far as it can go.
Overall, it is above than average film to see.
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