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Archive for the ‘Kucch Love Jaisaa’ Category

Madhu (Shefaali Shah), a much-married and terribly antsy housewife chooses to go get a life when her workaholic husband forgets her birthday. She buys herself a car and joins hands with a private detective (Rahul Bose) to help him solve his case. The adventure gets dangerous when she discovers the detective is actually a gangster on the run. Can the wife and mother return unscathed to sweet domesticity or is her life going to change forever?The film has an interesting premise: rich, bored housewife gets attracted to lowbrow goon and is willing to go on a wild goose chase with him. Reason? She wants to bring alive all her wildest fantasies before it’s too late to put her ordered, insipid life at stake and take risks

The film also has an interesting cast with Shefaali Shah and Rahul Boseforming an unusual couple on screen. But sadly, they fail to let the sparks fly and get the chemistry crackling. All along, the attraction between them seems fake as they spend long, leisurely hours in a distant resort, eating mutton biryani and carrot juice. Does it really take a loud burp and some rustic table manners on the part of the tapori gangster to break the ice and have the Pali Hill lady humming romantic numbers?

Also, the lady seems to be so gullible and so easy to fool, it does seem unreal. It takes her eternity to realize her companion’s true identity, even though the television keeps blaring out the truth. The duo try hard, but the romance never does light up the screen. Nor do the private lives of the mismatched couple throw up enticing moments that could hold the script together.

The film is a biographical account of Sindhutai Sapkal, a woman who became a social activist after a traumatic life. Born in a poor, cattle grazing family in Wardha as Chindi (Ragamuffin), Sindhutai was first married off at the age of 12 to a man who was 20 years elder to her and then abandoned by her husband on charges of infidelity.

Travelling through the backwaters of Maharashtra, the braveheart never abandoned hope and courage and ended up in San Jose on a fund-raising mission for her orphanage which still provides shelter to homeless kids.

Movie Review: The film works so well only because it is an inspiring story of an ordinary woman who reaches extraordinary heights by sheer grit. Sindhutai’s story is almost an allegorical tale which mirrors the fate of millions of exploited women, the world over. And her valour and will power in the face of misfortune illuminates her life story which ends up as a strong feminist parable for all and sundry.

Kudos to Anath Mahadevan for maintaining a remarkable degree of restraint in his narration. Nowhere does he try to imbue his protagonist with larger-than-life hues and keeps her firmly grounded despite her heroism. Even the performances are exemplary, specially Tejaswani Pandit’s rendition of the single mother who seeks to write her own destiny in a male-oriented society.