‘Gehraiyaan’ Review: Shakun Batra’s film really goes there

Express News Service

Naseeruddin Shah shines in Gehraiyaan. His character, Vinod, is a loner and an estranged father, much like the one he played in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Young actors bolt from playing ‘types’; veterans make the most of it. I’m not sure if director Shakun Batra—who has an eye for indicative casting, like putting Rishi Kapoor in a film about Kapoors—meant a connection with Zoya Akhtar’s film. But I’ll very well take it as one: the man who left his duties and child to roam the world is returned here in a contrasting role.

Naseer’s presence has a calming effect on Shakun’s film. Yet the story, which rises and falls like the shots of crashing waves, is about his onscreen daughter. Alisha (Deepika Padukone) is a fitness entrepreneur in Mumbai, six years into a stalling relationship with Karan (Dhairya Karwa). They aren’t exactly poor — just unhappy about their present standing in life. Karan, a former advertiser, is struggling with a novel. Alisha supports him while waiting for her own app idea to take off. She’s weary, overworked and losing sight of her dreams. “I want to live like the other half,” she says in anger and frustration. Doesn’t Yoga clear the mind?

Alisha’s cousin, Tia (Ananya Panday), invites them for a trip to her Alibaug beach house. Stepping onto a private yacht—oddly named Samara, as in the inexpensive wine—she meets Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi), Tia’s fiancé. He’s into real estate, and the most unreal thing about him is his open flirting. It starts out small: the early texts, the hand on the hip. Before we know it, they’re in her Mumbai apartment, kissing aggressively as their partners disperse downstairs.

It’s a quick start that doesn’t feel like one. The past sneaks up on these folks. The screenplay—by Shakun, Ayesha Devitre Dhillon and Sumit Roy—is more webbed than it initially appears. Alisha and Tia’s dads were business partners. Something irreparable happened between them. Karan and Tia are friends from before. Zain is frosty around Tia’s mom. Alisha and Zain share similar childhood traumas. The focus on family—or familial relations—is there even when the film takes a turn for the sinister. “No one will help us,” Jitesh (Rajat Kapoor), Zain’s business partner, reminds him. “…except family.”

It’s a familiar insight from the makers of Kapoor & Sons. What’s unfamiliar, though, are the complex psychologies at play. Deepika has described the film as a ‘domestic noir’, and we come to see why. Alisha and Zain buck the trend of besotted movie leads. Their affair is viewed through, rather than despite of, their material lives. There are two complications that arrive in quick succession, at the same party. It’s the best sequence in the film, fusing larger professional troubles with sudden, private ones.

Cinematographer Kaushal Shah accentuates the pinks and teals, in sync with a pop soundtrack. Shakun, more than ever, seems in control of his visual and sonic landscape. There is a hint of Steve McQueen’s Shame—most strikingly in the hotel room scenes overlooking the sea. It’s a moody, handsome production, though I wish we cut away more often from Zain and Tia’s upper-crust world. The only time this happens is when the couple stops at a roadside tapri, and it’s a surprise.

Deepika turns in a tough, layered performance—possibly her best since 2015’s Piku. The scene where her character retreats, having caused a minor accident and unable to take the ensuing chaos, feels starkly real (as does, I’m happy to report, a shot of her and Siddhant in an Acroyoga pose). Dhairya and Ananya play fine supports; the latter, quite sportingly, sells Tia’s obliviousness to a T.

The film suffers in its search for symmetry. Now and then, the dialogue buoys up with exposition. “I feel so stuck,” Alisha repeats, echoing a flashback. “We’ll start over,” Zain says in a similar vein. As a narrative, Gehraiyaan goes commendably far for a mainstream Hindi film. But its words tend to trip up the ride. I’ll rationalize it (since I liked the film) as something inherent to romances. They’re never so smooth-sailing.

Gehraiyaan 
Cast: Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday, Dhairya Karwa
Director: Shakun Batra
Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video
Rating:3.5/5