Entertainment / Parineeti Chopra Starrer ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ Gets Audience Nod!

Parineeti Chopra Starrer ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ Gets Audience Nod!

Entertainment Sep 12, 2013

by Matthew Currie

Director: Maneesh Sharma

Writer: Jaideep Sahni

Stars: Sushant Singh Rajput, Parineeti Chopra, Rishi Kapoor

Rating: 4/5

Among the South Asian films at TIFF 2013, Shuddh Desi Romance stands out as the only one to embrace the larger-than-life energy and elaborate song-and-dance numbers of mainstream Bollywood.

It’s perhaps not the best way to turn heads at a festival that favours Oscar potential and indie cred. But even though Band Baaja Baaraat director Maneesh Sharma’s latest rom-com isn’t likely to earn many votes for the vaunted People’s Choice award, it is plenty of fun and, as far as breezy feel-good films go, fairly ambitious.

The romance in question revolves around Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput) and Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra) two 20-somethings who meet while on the way to a wedding.

_{(L-R) Director Maneesh Sharma, actress Parineeti Chopra and writer Jaideep Sahni from the India's "Shuddh Desi Romance" cast prepare for the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival Premiere on September 11, 2013 in Toronto, Canada. (Getty Images/AFP)}

Both work part-time as pretend wedding guests, filling out sparsely attended ceremonies for a caterer (Rishi Kapoor).

Only this time, the wedding they’re attending happens to be Raghu’s. It’s an arranged marriage, and the groom has doubts, which manifest in an almost-desperate wedding bus flirtation with a thoroughly baffled (but also kind of charmed) Gayatri. Ultimately, she shuts him down, but on the big day, Raghu’s panic wins out and leaps to freedom through a bathroom window, leading bride Tara (Vaani Kapoor) at the altar. A few weeks later, he bumps into his bus crush on the street.

What ensues is a typically zany, light-hearted courtship, but with an interesting twist. As in any rom-com, the lovers must clear their share of romantic hurdles; for one, jilted bride Tara, who returns to complete the obligatory love triangle.

In this case, however, most of them stem from their shared phobia of marriage in a country where pre-marital relations remain highly taboo.

Even as they shack up under the pretense of being brother and sister, Gayatri and Raghu feel the innate pull of the altar, and it terrifies them, leading to many of the film’s best gags (several more involving bathroom window escapades) but also dramatic material, such as Gayatri’s cold reaction to having dealt with unplanned pregnancy years earlier.

By transforming marriage from the implicit goal to an explicit obstacle, Sahni’s screenplay manages to put an intriguing spin on the well-worn boy-meets-loses-and-wins-back-girl narrative, engaging with a timely issue in Indian culture in the process.

To be clear, though, Shuddh Desi Romance isn’t out to change the world.

Its goal is firmly to entertain, which it does, in exemplary fashion. Sharma deftly hopping between crackling screwball energy (Sahni’s script affording plenty of top-shelf banter) and intimate human moments, shot with commendable restraint, that effectively endear us to his characters.

Much of the credit naturally goes to his three leads. Leading man Rajput is asked to alternate between playing the fool (at one point, he gets wrapped up in some curtains while hiding from his jilted bride’s uncle) and the charmer, and in both modes, he is irresistible.

It would take a true, dyed-in-the-wool cynic to withstand the high-beam smile plastered on Raghu’s face the first time he doggedly, sweetly makes his intentions known to Gayatri.

Chopra more than validates Raghu’s pursuit of her character, radiating charisma, spunk and a hint of damage. And not to be overlooked, Kapoor turns in a quietly inviting performance that imbues Tara with grace and warmth.

All three are worthy of our interest, which is the real key for films in this genre, so often populated by blank slates we’re asked to invest in for no other reason beyond they’re the stars and they’re pretty.

The only thing that doesn’t really work are the talking head sequences the director includes, wherein we’ll suddenly cut to some unspecified future date, and one of the characters will address the audience directly, explaining what they were feeling at this point in the film.

It’s jarring, the dialogue’s stilted and it rarely offers anything that couldn’t have been communicated more organically or simply left to our imagination.

It’s a relatively minor quibble. On the whole, Shuddh Desi Romance is a first-rate rom-com, one that revels in the genre’s classic tropes as it repositions them for a new generation.

_{Image Courtesy: Getty images & Yash Raj Movies

Video Courtesy: Yash Raj Films}

Matthew Currie

Author

A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...

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Parineeti Chopra Starrer ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ Gets Audience Nod!

by Matthew Currie

Matthew Currie

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