Manmarziyaan
Year: 2018
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Vicky Kaushal, Abhishek Bachchan

Love is crazy. Love is illogical. Love is wild.

Manmarziyaan is one such crazy, illogical and wild love-story. Anurag Kashyap, more famous for his crime sagas, comes back to his Dev-D mode and presents a tale of three star-crossed characters exploring love in their own ways.

The center-point of this story is a headstrong girl (Tapsee Pannu), who gives two hoots to the societal norms and brazenly goes on with her daily dalliances with her boyfriend (Vicky Kaushal), a DJ who is still unsure of what he wants to do in life. Enter an expat banker (Abhishek Bachchan), a wise guy with a mature head on his shoulders, who is smitten by the girl, despite knowing that she is already taken! With family pressures, marriage proposals, engagements and elopements, the ground is set for play- only the game for winning the heart of this ex-hockey-player girl will not follow any set rules. Who will win in the end?

Kashyap sets the story in Amritsar and creates the authentic middle-class, small town Punjabi atmosphere, which keeps boiling over with the heroine’s devil-may-care antics and the resultant turbulence unleashed in the lives of the protagonists and their families. Peppering the scenes flaunting heroine’s liberal sexuality and some casual horny conversations, Kashyap manages to spice up things in the first half. The small observational scenes about the side-characters are well-captured. The steamy first half tantalizingly brings the storyline to a dramatic edge but then the things start going southward till its stretched conclusion.

Vicky Kaushal’s exuberant, rather empty-headed stud lover and Abhishek Bachchan’s strong silent romantic wise guy are rather forced. But the film showcases Tapsee Pannu’s acting prowess like none before. She delivers a believable, powerful performance as a strong-willed volatile girl making impulsive choices and coming at unexpected crossroads.

The film often feels like a Dev D’s female version and it also brings back memories of films such as Swami, Gharonda and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. A modern take on all these flicks it certainly is but it fails to tug at the heartstrings.

Rating

2.5 stars