Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Gehraiyaan has been generating a lot of buzz, PR or not. So it came on my radar before it was to be released. I gravitate towards ‘realistic fiction’ like a person to their terrace on a sunny winter day, so I had to watch it. The good thing is that it’s on Amazon Prime, so my pandemic fearing a** could watch it in the comfort of my home (no, I didn’t make popcorns or had soda as is tradition).
The film stars Deepika Padukone (Alisha), Siddhant Chaturvedi (Zain), and Ananya Panday (Tia) in the lead with Shakun Batra as the director. It also stars Dhairya Karwa (Karan), Naseeruddin Shah and Rajat Kapoor in supporting roles. Released today, it is about relationship, complexities of in a family, love and navigating the modern Indian dating scene with a backdrop of a thriller which makes sense considering the film is a ‘domestic noir’. And it’s important you find out a little about the genre so you don’t feel like a clown when it doesn’t turn out to be ‘realistic fiction’ (in this case, the clown is me).
You must have seen the trailer. You must have also seen Siddhant (Zain) and Deepika (Alisha) make-out, Deepika in a bikini (guess it’s a big deal because a little pop-up on Amazon Prime told me this is her first since Cocktail in 2012), Ananya (Tia) crying her eyes out and you think the film is about cheating and betrayal. Oh boy, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s more Gone Girl than Cocktail or Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.
The story is not that unique, we’ve heard of it before. A young ambitious woman has been in a colourless long-term relationship. She’s dissatisfied and in comes the magnetic fiancé of her younger cousin. They both have emotional baggage that they connect over. And for the rest, you can fill in the blanks with deaths, blackmail, generational cheating and more. It depicts the darkness in Indian families that is often swept under the rug.
The Alisha-Tia relationship was the highlight of the movie for me. Deepika and Ananya do a great job at portraying a relationship between cousins that built on love, secrecy, guilt and lies. In fact, Deepika Padukone’s acting is the highlight of the movie. It’s her movie. By the end, all I was rooting for was for her to be okay with Tia. The girls have been through too much trauma. The film ends with an open-ending, maybe their dynamics will change, maybe not. It’s up to you to decide.
As stated before, I went into the movie not knowing what to expect. When I first read Who Is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews, that’s the exact feeling I got. The twists and turns keep you hooked, because you don’t know what to expect next. It goes on for 148 minutes, but it tries to pack too much in that run-time. I think we could have done with a twist less.
The cinematography is beautiful and the accompanying music is melodious, it shows you all the good about Mumbai with a backdrop of Alibaug but what I loved about the movie are the dialogues, it’s exactly how I talk to my friends. They felt real. But where the movie fails is setting the tone that it will be a domestic noir in the opening scenes, though if you’re good at picking up foreshadowing, you won’t be disappointed.
As an aside, I would have invested in Alisha’s app, it would have made a killing in the pandemic! So the final verdict is, watch the movie, it’s unlike the usual masala movies, but without missing out on the masala.