A recent release that I saw at the London Film Festival a couple of years ago, and which is now on Netflix, fits into the very familiar and comfortable patterns of the romcom. It overlays a traditional familial relationship, updating it to the social media age in some pretty heavy-handed ways at times, but I found it likeable all the same.
I was honestly sort of expecting to hate this once the film had set up the premise — which it does very swiftly — as out-of-touch newly-widowed father tries to connect with his moody musician son using social media (specifically Facebook messenger), by impersonating a hot woman whose picture his own mother has found on the internet. These are broad strokes, very very broad, and they are played for the expected laughs (it’s all too easy to laugh at people acting stupidly). However, as the film went on I found myself enjoying it quite in spite of myself, perhaps because of the likeability of all the leads, and the gusto with which they go about their somewhat hackneyed plot, but also because of the filmmaking on show. There’s a really lovely and evocative sequence of the son moving physically through his memories and encountering his mother on the street. I wasn’t entirely sold on the son’s music, and as I said already, it can get quite broad in its humour, but it remains a sweet romcom.
CREDITS
Director Leena Yadav लीना यादव; Writers Vivek Anchalia, Manu Rishi Chadha and Yadav; Cinematographer Donald McAlpine; Starring Rishi Kapoor ऋषी कपूर, Anirudh Tanwar, Amyra Dastur अमायरा दस्तूर; Length 129 minutes.
Seen at Odeon Tottenham Court Road, London, Sunday 21 October 2018.
filmcentric 