Love Aaj Kal

Rating : 4/5
Date Seen: 02-08-2009
Director : Imtiaz Ali
Cast : Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rishi Kapoor, Rahul Khanna, Raj Zutshi, Vir Das, Giselle Monteiro

The movie attempts to answer the above question by example. The questioner here is Jai Vardhan Singh (Saif) who’s living in the UK, dreaming of working for the Golden Gate Company in San Francisco, and in the meanwhile trying not to “pile-on” to beautiful girls. While trying the whole “don’t mean to pile-on, but” routine, he meets beautiful Meera Pandit (Deepika). They hit it off, which subsequently leads to a relationship. When their careers dictate that they move to different countries, they part amicably, and move on with their lives . . .

This film with it’s dual-track love-stories falls strongly into the romance genre. However it’s not your frothy, bubbly romance, a la “Jab we met” , but more of a tale of “difficult” love - i.e.; finding “The One”, and on finding him/her (if you do), the more onerous task of knowing if this is it. Our protagonists Meera and Jai really don’t have a clue; they don’t appear to have thought that far.

Saif plays two characters in the film, that of suave city-boy Jai, and also that of the young Sardar Veer. He looked quite a “natural” Sardar, and even managed the Punjabi accent ably. Overall his performance was energetic, enthusiastic, and if not immaculate, really quite decent. Deepika is quite good as Meera. Meera is an unconventional Bollywood heroine, in that she is smart, has her wits about her, and is calm and reserved by nature. Thus, Deepika seemed a good fit for this role, although her monotonous dialogue delivery didn’t actually light up the screen in the first half of the movie. Her acting style is rather understated, which kind of works here, because that’s who Meera is.

The film when it started, presented the Jai-Meera story in a flurry of quick, short takes - I could just imagine the director yelling “Cut“ after every 10 seconds. Until about the interval, this was how it went, kind of abrupt, and cryptic - made me feel like I was getting the compressed version of the story. But post-interval Ali seemed to get his act together, and the squiggly little pieces of the plot seemed to come together and flow. Thus while I was beginning to have my doubts in the first half of the film, I must say I was floored by the second. The characters are hard not to like, and Meera’s predicament had me shedding a few tears of my own.

“Love Aaj Kal” is a film well worth your time.