Summer Lovin' (Part Two): On Why I'm looking forward to "Raanjhanaa"

1) It looks good. Shot on location in Varanasi and Delhi, Raanjhanaa has the specificity of place and culture that I enjoy so much. The costumes and makeup are just right (Sonam's JNU student-activist wardrobe is perfect, and she makes for a surprisingly convincing high school kid in the trailer), and the Banaras scenes are alive with color and flavor and the hustle-bustle of smallish-town India. Aanand L. Rai did a beautiful job of creating lived-in, authentic-seeming worlds in Tanu Weds Manu, and it looks like he's done it again in Raanjhanaa.

2) It looks fun. I often complain that a lot of the mainstream Bollywood films - even some of the really good ones - that are set in upper-middle-class Mumbaidon't sound quite right. It invariably seems to me as if the characters depicted in those films would be speaking English, or English spattered with casual Hindi, if they existed in the real world.When they set forth on pyaar and deewangi, it usually rings a little labored, almost as if  the lines were thought and written in English and then translated to Hindi. Filmmakers who set their films in a milieu in which the people actually speak Hindi don't face that problem, and they get to write some clever, funny, crowd-pleasing lines. Kangna's Kanpuriya firebrand had the most hilariously caustic dialogue in Tanu Weds Manu, and  here, too, there's plenty of humor to be found in the writing. The trailer is filled with stuff that got me chuckling. When Dhanush's friend points out to him that he'll be eating firni at his beloved's walima if he doesn't confess his feelings to her, it cracks me up. It isn't mithai at a shaadi. It's firni at a walima, and it's just right. When he tells the rickshaw-wallah, "Don't take money from her; she's your bhabhi" line? I can't tell you how often this desi kid has heard some posturing small-town cousin say that IRL.

3) The soundtrack is gorgeous. Guys, I'm not kidding. For the past couple weeks, I've been listening almost exclusively to the Raanjhanaa OST (except, of course, when I am listening to the Lootera OST), and it is a thing of beauty. Tum Tak and the title song have a kind of soaring, romantic joyousness to them, while Aise Na Dekho and Nazar Laaye Na are the sort of quiet, amber-dipped Rahman tracks you play on a lazy afternoon drive by the lake. I want to see how these beautiful songs come to life in film's narrative.

4) The cast is exciting. Dhanush, in the little I've seen of his Tamil outings, is a marvelously intense actor. Here, he's doing his best lovelorn swain, and he's doing it with early-SRK levels of charm. He also seems to have worked very hard to get the Hindi right. (The accent is there, but they've kinda written an explanation for it into the plot.) And then there's Sonam Kapoor. Sonam gets a lot of hate online, but I am just gonna go ahead and tell you that I . . . might love her. That's right: I'm a Sonam Kapoor apologist. I mean, she's not a great actress by any means. In a couple of her films, she's not even good. (Like, come on. She was basically playing herself in Aisha, and she was the weakest part of the cast there.) And that nasal, entitled voice can get a bit grating. But she's not bad in that lifeless, wooden way that Katrina Kaif is. And I found her charming in Delhi-6 and Mausam, both movies that required her to get away from her public persona and play what Times of India's website will call "Indian" characters, in low-key, extensively detailed, relatively un-filmi settings. (Of course, Mausam eventually rode the express train to Crazyganj, but I digress.) She might not be the all-purpose Hindi film heroine, but she has an affable screen presence, and has a look that works really well in a variety of genres. (This doesn't sound like much, but think about it. How many leading ladies would look as convincing as a period-piece princess as they would as a cosmopolitan fashion-y type? Not too many, right?) I have high hopes for Sonam here. Kangna was a revelation in the richly-written part she got to perform in Tanu Weds Manu, and, judging by the trailer, Sonam gets to do more than just be the object of the male lead's affection in Raanjhanaa. Also, she is delightful in the flirting/squabbling moments with Dhanush, and there isn't really much we can do about that voice. The supporting cast looks stellar, too. Swara Bhaskar was Tanu Weds Manu's MVP, and should be cast in more stuff. Zeeshan Ayyub is hilarious, and might just steal this one the way Deepak Dobriyal stole Tanu. Abhay Deol can generally be relied on to deliver a solid performance (even though I get the feeling that he might think he's a better actor than he actually is.)

5) Tanu Weds Manu was so great. I've already mentioned seven million good things about that film, but Aanand L. Rai's debut feature is seriously underrated. I love how sweet Madhavan is in it. I love its unhurried pace. I love its idiosyncratic, warm-hearted portrayal of middle-class life in India. I love that the wild heroine isn't judged for drinking or smoking or having sex, but is called out, instead, for her inconsiderate behavior, and isn't tamed at the end. I'm hoping Raanjhanaa is just as good. But I was all misgivings-y about YJHD in the first installment of this little series, and I ended up loving it. So obviously I'm going to hate this one. Sigh.