Director: Homi Adjania.
Rating: * * 1/2
A very dark, surreal and depressing film indeed. A moribund way of life. A tale about bad childhood. A tale about depressed people.
Its the story about a dysfunctional Parsi Family called the Sethna's. A retired sculptor Dinshaw Sethna (Nasseruddin Shah) lives with his voluptuous wife Katy (Dimple Kapadia) in Panchgani, while brother Farokh (Boman Irani), his wife Tina (Simone Singh) and father Fardoonjee (Honey Chhaya) live in Mumbai.
So a complete stranger Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan) lands at the Sethna house in Panchgani to learn sculpting from Dinshaw and ends up romancing his wife Katy, then he moves to their Mumbai house where he befriends the ailing Sethna patriarch Fardoonji and what follows then is a complete topsy-turvy of events that I cannot reveal.
What intrigues me in this film is the direction. The debutante director in his very first film proves that he is class apart. He has directed this film like a veteran. Another efficient member in the GenX directors list.
The camerawork and background score are slick.
The stellar starcast has given some top notch performances. Manoj Pahwa as the inspector with dwindling English is pretty good and so is Honey Chayya. Dimple Kapadia as the philandering wife overacts, whereas Nasseruddin Shah as the dumwit husband underacts. Simone Singh is efficient. Boman Irani is outstanding, he enacts his part with such conviction that you forget he is boman and feel he is indeed Farooq Sethna. And Saif Ali Khan is truly competent, he leaves no stone unturned to assure that his performance is world class. Truly my favorite Khan.
But despite many things going in the favour of the film be it performances or duration of the film, something seems to have gone wrong and hence the rating.
-Sanketh Rao.
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