Via Darjeeling

Wasted potential

Thats how I can best describe the film.

Inspite of an impressive cast, the director did not know what to do with them. Kay Kay and Sonali Kulkarni are hopeless miscast. Two 35+ actors trying to play a 20s something cootchie-cooing honeymoon couple is just gross. Kay Kay especially looks old while Sonali is quite screechy.

However the director salvages the movie somewhat in the second half inspite of some more bad acting and characterization. Sandhya Mridul is hopelessly stereotyped and cliched while the ad film director guy Proshant is just hopeless at acting - he just comes across as completely fake and the dinner-table/party conversation does not feel believable AT ALL.

However the interpretation of the story by all the people present at the party does raise the game and we are immersed in the game of guessing as to which one of them is the true version. Its the technique which was recently seen in Vantage Point and by many others in the past, including the great Rashomon.

So even with its failings, it could have been an interesting movie had the director not tried to be too clever. Instead of just leaving the viewer at the various interpretations, the director tried to introduce a couple of twists at the end and just leaves more than a few questions unanswered. The feeling I got from the people around me as I walked out of the cinema was "WTF, what kind of ending is that? So why/how did so-and-so ...."

PS - While I like to think that the director was playing around, deliberately confusing us, some of my friends are less forgiving and think he is an ass who didnt know what he was doing :)