Maneesh Sharma's 'Shuddh Desi Romance', starring
Rishi Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Sushant Singh Rajput
and Vaani Kapoor, is a forgettable flick.
While watching light-hearted love stories also known
as rom-coms, there are two reactions that come to
mind. "What next?" And "Who Cares?" This annoying
film, masquerading as a modern-day parable on What
Young People Want, definitely falls in the who cares
category.
The three main characters are so confused about life,
sex, love and commitment (in that order) that you
wonder why a film was scripted about them and their
annoying lives in the first place. The "hero", if we may
call him that, is not only commitment-phobic, but is
quite simply impervious to any kind of gravity in life.
Don't misunderstand. He takes himself very seriously.
But it's hard to take him seriously as he vacillates
between two women, both equally absurd in their
libertines' apparel borrowed straight out of some stale
Julia Roberts-Susan Sarandon film which probably got
shelved because the hero ran away with the
cameraman.
This, then, is your 'Shuddh Desi Romance', so
contaminated with candour that it doesn't realize the
difference between being sincerely searching and
artificially scandalous.
Jaideep Sahni has written some remarkable films for
Yashraj in the past. Among his best writing are Ram
Gopal Varma's 'Company', Yashraj’s 'Chak De..' and
Dibakar Bannerjee's 'Khosla Ka Ghosla'.
Sadly, 'Shuddh Desi Romance' ranks as Sahni's worst-
written endeavour to date. The film has only three main
characters, one of whom slips in and out of two
women's lives as though he had seen Yash Chopra's
'Daag' so many times that he knew that the tangle
within the triangle would get resolved in the last reel.
'Shuddh Desi Romance' is not the kind of film that
obtains or even seeks a decent resolution. The plot is
happy to let the protagonist Raghu stew in his own
orgasmic juices. The guy is plainly horny all the time.
As played by the over-zealous Sushant Singh Rajput,
the hero doesn't even try to hide his hard-on. He wears
his libido like a badge of honour and flaunts his
carnality in front of the two ladies whom he
encounters. They for reasons best known to them,
seem to enjoy his company after an initial bout of
demurral.
Men are often to think with their di***. But women???!!!!
It is baffling how a protagonist as low-life and sleazy
as Raghu can attract two attractive feisty free-willed
women. Or why they would encourage his advances
when they know he thinks only with his ...well to use a
term Rishi Kapoor uses with such endearing
picturesqueness...pappu in the pants.
Pappu in the pants has rollicking time. Wish we could
join him...it...whatever!!! Curiously the hero and his
horniness are like two different entities in the film. No
bumper prizes for guessing which of the two entities
gets an upper hand in the script that seems hell-bent
on celebrating what, for the want of a better term, we
must describe as low-life libidinousness.
For all his talk of 'zoron ka attraction', Raghu, as
played by Sushant, comes across as a wimpy
womanizer, scoring brownie points with any woman
who opens her mouth to let his tongue in. If the di**-
head hero had been played by a more intelligent actor,
he would probably have been interesting. In Sushant's
hands, Raghu is an irksome skirt-chaser. Nothing
more.
The two women are more interesting (aren't they
always?). Especially Parineeti Chopra whose dumbly
defiant smoking swearing character Gayatri acquires
some stability through the actress' fearless embrace of
the camera space. No matter how frustratingly ill-
conceived Gayatri's rebellious attitude may be,
Parineeti owns up to the character's weaknesses like a
man.
Debutant Vaani Kapoor plays her very awkwardly-
written character with a mysterious smile that suggests
it knows something that we don't. Not that we care.
Both Sushant and Parineeti's characters and their
grating chemistry are troubled by an uneasy sense of
deja vu. Director Maneesh Sharma makes the two
characters carryovers of Ranveer Singh and Anushka
Sharma in 'Band Baaja Baaraat'.
Really, the twosome here should be put into a banned
Baja Baraat. The wedding shenanigans so delectably
unselfconscious in 'Band Baaja Baaraat' here seem
laboured to suit the director's purposes of creating a
sense of nonchalant sexual liberation in a small-town
where every potential voyeur can peep into his
neighbour's home without being charged with
voyeuristic trespassing.
To the cinematographer Manu Anand's credit the
authentic outdoors of Jaipur do not end up mocking
the inherently mockable material. Most of the principal
actors barring Rishi Kapoor give over-rehearsed
performance projected as a laboured casualness.
Rishi Kapoor as the wedding caterer is the exception,
sinking his teeth into his role even as our hearts sink to
the ground at the self-defeating numbing verbosity of
the three main characters.
Most of the film is like a clumsy radio play. The three
main characters in this lust-triangle just speak and
speak about their pathetic self-limiting world. Beyond
a point we feel like reluctant eavesdroppers in an ill-
managed ménage a trois.
Flat and phoney, the self-conscious realism of the
small-time gender-equations in 'Shuddh Desi
Romance' leave us untouched, unamused and cold.
In terms of pointless posturing, this one ranks even
lower than Yashraj's 'Neil 'N' Nikki'.
Live-in relationships never felt less inviting.
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