One of my favourite moments in Love BreakUps Zindagi is when a twice divorced Govind (Cyrus Sahukar) sits in his Delhi barsaati with the woman he thinks is the answer to his search for love. There is a pile of home delivery menus between them and he puns on misspelt chicken dishes till she decides to make the perfect Maggi for him. With a bit of cheese and semiyaan..yes, vermicelli. Sheila (Tisca Chopra) already knows why Govind’s marriages have failed. Now he wants to know why she has stayed single.
Sheila who has already broken the mould of a filmy mausi by sneaking a smoke and a drink with Govind when they first met at a wedding, breaks another one when she wonders about India’s obsession with marrying off its daughters. She did not marry because she was waiting for someone a bit ‘off-centre’ just like herself. “I am glad you waited,” he says. For a May December pair, they have a funny, warm, credible chemistry that more or less establishes the tenor of the love stories that LBZ negotiates. Love here happens not suddenly with singing violins but when no one is watching.
Over conversations, casual and occasionally serious moments when realisation creeps slowly and life shifts on its axis. The best parts of the film are exchanges that lead first to a friendship and then hint at a tentative something between lead pair Jai (Zayed Khan) and Naina (Dia Mirza), two successful and relatively settled young people who meet at a wedding of common friends. And far removed from their lives and relationships, they start bonding with each other over shared snatches of joy and the loss of a loved one. Or when Naina is waiting for her boyfriend to turn up and he doesn’t and Jai walks her back to the house, chatting her up about relationships.
Or when the two share little things in Mumbai that seem big in retrospect because they have never shared them with their own partners. Director Sahil Sangha layers his first film with the minutiae of uneasy silences and jovial banter and this is a languorous film and treats love like a journey rather than a thunder clap.
A journey made pleasant by Mirza’s warm, natural performance that captures both her girl next door charm and her movie star glamour. There is a rare radiance and glow about her presence that few filmmakers have done justice to. Zayed Khan sparkles in comic repartee and Cyrus Sahukar and Tisca Chopra are a delight. The music works and this is a visually aesthetic film. This cannot however be a completely detached review because Unboxed Writers have from the sidelines watched the passionate love that has been invested in its making. But even for an audience with no emotional investment, the film delivers what it promises. An earnest romance.
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )