Film: Shuddh Desi Romance
Starring: Sushant Singh Rajput,Parineeti Chopra,Vaani Kapoor
Director: Maneesh Sharma
Producer: Aditya Chopra
Banner: Yash Raj Films
Music: Sachin-Jigar
The three main characters are so
confused about life, sex, love and commitment(in that order) that you
wonder why a film was scripted about them and their annoying lives in
the first place. The "hero", if we may call him that, is not only
commitment-phobic, but is quite simply impervious to any kind of gravity
in life.
Don't misunderstand. He takes himself
very seriously. But it's hard to take him seriously as he vacillates
between two women, both equally absurd in their libertines' apparel
borrowed straight out of some stale Julia Roberts-Susan Sarandon film
which probably got shelved because the hero ran away with the cameraman.
This, then, is your "Shuddh Desi
Romance", so contaminated with candour that it doesn't realize the
difference between being sincerily searching and artificially
scandalous.
Jaideep Sahni has written some
remarkable films for Yashraj in the past. Among his best writing are Ram
Gopal Varma's "Company",Yashraj's "Chak De.." and Dibakar Bannerjee's
"Khosla Ka Ghosla".
Sadly, "Shuddh Desi Romance" ranks as
Sahni's worst-written endeavour to date. The film has only three main
characters, one of whom slips in and out of two women's lives as though
he had seen Yash Chopra's "Daag" so many times that he knew that the
tangle within the triangle would get resolved in the last reel.
"Shuddh Desi Romance" is not the kind of
film that obtains or even seeks a decent resolution. The plot is happy
to let the protagonist Raghu stew in his own orgasmic juices. The guy is
plainly horny all the time. As played by the over-zealous Sushant Singh
Rajput, the hero doesn't even try to hide his hard-on. He wears his
libido like a badge of honour and flaunts his carnality in front of the
two ladies whom he encounters.They for reasons best known to them, seem
to enjoy his company after an initial bout of demurral.
Men are often to think with their dicks. But women???!!!!
It is baffling how a protagonist as
low-life and sleazy as Raghu can attract two attractive feisty
free-willed women. Or why they would encourage his advances when they
know he thinks only with his ...well to use a term Rishi Kapoor uses
with such endearing picturesqueness...pappu in the pants.
Pappu in the pants has rollicking time.
Wish we could join him...it...whatever!!! Curiously the hero and his
horniness are like two different entities in the film. No bumper prizes
for guessing which of the two entities gets an upper hand in the script
that seems hellbent on celebrating what, for the want of a better term,
we must describe as low-life libidinousness.
For all his talk of "zoron ka
attraction", Raghu, as played by Sushant, comes across as a wimpy
womanizer, scoring brownie points with any woman who opens her mouth to
let his tongue in. If the dick-head hero had been played by a more
intelligent actor, he would probably have been interesting. In Sushant's
hands, Raghu is an irksome skirt-chaser. Nothing more.
The two women are more interesting
(aren't they always?). Especially Parineeti Chopra whose dumbly defiant
smoking swearing character Gayatri acquires some stability through the
actress' fearless embrace of the camera space. No matter how
frustratingly ill-conceived Gayatri's rebellious attitude may be,
Parineeti owns up to the character's weaknesses like a man.
Debutant Vaani Kapoor plays her very
awkwardly-written character with a mysterious smile that suggests it
knows something that we don't. Not that we care.
Both Sushant and Parineeti's characters
and their grating chemistry are troubled by an uneasy sense of deja vu.
Director Maneesh Sharma makes the two characters carryovers of Ranveer
Singh and Anushka Sharma in "Band Baaja Baaraat".
Really, the twosome here should be put
into a banned Baja Baraat. The wedding shenanigans so delectably
unselfconscious in "Band Baaja Baaraat" here seem laboured to suit the
director's purposes of creating a sense of nonchalant sexual liberation
in a smalltown where every potential voyeur can peep into his
neighbour's home without being charged with voyeuristic trespassing.
To the cinematographer Manu Anand's
credit the authentic outdoors of Jaipur do not end up mocking the
inherently mockable material. Most of the principal actors barring Rishi
Kapoor give over-rehearsed performance projected as a laboured
casualness.
Rishi Kapoor as the wedding caterer is
the exception, sinking his teeth into his role even as our hearts sink
to the ground at the self-defeating numbing verbosity of the three main
characters.
Most of the film is like a clumsy radio
play. The three main characters in this lust-triangle just speak and
speak about their pathetic selflimiting world. Beyond a point we feel
like reluctant eavesdroppers in an ill-managed menage a trois.
Flat and phoney, the selfconscious
realism of the small-time gender-equations in "Shuddh Desi Romance"
leave us untouched, unamused and cold.
In terms of pointless posturing, this one ranks even lower than Yashraj's "Neil 'N' Nikki".