romance in the badlands

Do you judge a book by its cover? Do you let the title of a movie lead you to or away from theatres? Ishqiya may be a semantics googly but it’s the best Hindi movie I’ve seen since Kaminey and incidentally, both come from the Vishal Bharadwaj stable. The man has since moved on from being a Tarentino wannabe; the characters are clearly fleshed out in their many dimensions. Balan is superb in essaying her role as a vulnerable seductress as she plots her way to revenge. She is foxy, sexually manipulative and steely; her smoldering on-screen presence manifesting the hurt and turmoil inside. Naseeruddin Shah is brilliant as expected, although I thought he looked more of a poet than a fugitive. Would romancing a sensuous widow be your top priority when demented gangsters bay for your blood?! You decide...Arshad Warsi’s character is like a loose cannon; he thinks with his groins and will bend every tenet of morality to live another day. He is glib, libidinous and is unhinged when rubbed the wrong way. Even the supporting cast delivers in reinforcing the themes of deception and betrayal. After puking through a deluge of McDonaldised assembly line Bollywood productions with hackneyed plots and slap-them-till-they-guffaw punch lines, this earthy drama is like a whiff of fresh breeze. It moves seamlessly from the comic to the sinister and has a background score to match. There are some caricatures, like the warlordesque but senile don who pursues the uncle-nephew pair, but these don’t rankle, they only reinforce the movie’s cynical air. Yet it’s not despondent; the elderly man’s ham handed effort at romance tugs at the heartstrings. There is redemption, as the woman is revealed to have schemed for love, not lucre and the hustlers return to save the day, driven by their hazy idea of what happy domesticity is, which even includes breaking wind and defecating by the riverside...

Watch this movie, if only to hear the duo argues about matters of the heart, as Babban (Warsi) challenges Khalujan (uncle) , ‘Tumhara ishq ishq hain aura mera ishq sex?’