On "Raanjhanaa"

(Warning! Mild spoilers ahead!)

Aanand L. Rai's Raanjhanaa is a throbbing scarlet wound of a movie. Not since Shahrukh Khan jumped off the roof of a train and into Manisha Koirala's explosive embrace in Dil Se has a Bollywood movie been so bracingly, devastatingly, enormously lovesick. At one point in the film, Kundan (Dhanush) drives a scooter into the Ganges in jealous fury, having just been told by the object of his affections, Zoya (Sonam Kapoor), that she loves somebody else. He climbs out of the water, leaving the scooter and Zoya behind. Rai does something similar with the story, taking it headlong into dark, troubled territory, but he keeps propelling his film deeper and deeper until you realize that his film isn't about love triumphant or even, as the title might suggest, love unrequited. In Raanjhanaa, all love, whether it is mutual or one-sided, is a gorgeous, untethered beast, and ultimately all who love tumble helplessly into its waiting jaws. (The notion of falling in love is literalized in the film's visuals; Kundan, arms outstretched Christ-like, beatific smile in place, falling into the river, then onto a bed of Holi colors. This sort of euphoric falling prefigures a more violent felling much later in the movie.)

The plot begins in familiar, filmi territory. In Benaras, a Hindu priest's little boy (the adorable Naman Jain, with a spot-on imitation of Dhanush's accented Hindi) sees a Muslim professor's little girl, and is instantly smitten. His entire being is, from that moment onward, oriented toward Zoya; this shift in his growing consciousness is gloriously illustrated with Tum Tak, the first of Rahman's several perfect songs. Zoya, on her prayer mat, directs her attentions toward a loftier presence. (Further into the story, Zoya's gaze will once again overlook Kundan and train itself on a savior-like figure, the ambitious, high-minded Akram, played with pleasing reticence by Abhay Deol.)    

In typical swain-like fashion, Kundan follows Zoya around for years until she deigns to pay attention to him. Their romance is short-lived. Sent away for years by her parents due to the scandal her tryst with Kundan causes, Zoya comes back from university even more unattainable. Kundan is undaunted, however, and keeps pursuing her. You guys, this isn't even the first half of the film. Wrists have been slit, scooters have been launched into holy rivers, but the story hasn't even begun to go totally, spectacularly nuts. 

Despite the high drama, just about everything in Raanjhanaa rings true (except, perhaps, the political portions of the film, which seem a little too facile.) Even in Benaras, God is in the details, and Rai's team nails the chaos peculiar to small-town life. The camerawork is vividly naturalistic and kinetic, and the colors and textures of Benaras feel vividly lived-in, not art-directed. (Compare the amiably inelegant, dog-poop-laden gullies of Raanjhanaa  to the spit-shined surfaces of Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, another recent film set in Varanasi.) There were moments - the Holi scene where Kundan ambushes Bindiya (the delightful, ferocious Swara Bhaskar) comes to mind - where I felt as if I were in the scene, as if the film had leapt right off the screen and into real life. Rai makes sure to fill his frames with teeming life; a rally marches on as Dhanush dances to the title song, an old lady breathes in her inhaler just out of focus as he sneaks into Zoya's room during a party. Each part is cast just right, with an eye toward picking actors who look like they could actually be living in that mohalla or arguing ethics on that university campus. (The supporting cast is first-rate all around, with Zeeshan Ayyub, as Kundan's long-suffering bestie, stealing several scenes with his pithy one-liners and the actor playing Abhay Deol's sister making a strikingly mournful impression.)

The writing is the other reason I bought into the film's reality, all three instances of wrist-slitting included. Rai and Himanshu Sharma have created a singular pair of characters here. Zoya And Kundan are both children, in a way. They rush toward what they want and use whom they can, heedless of the damage they leave in their wake. Kundan is more obviously immature. He will attempt suicide, he will coerce his friends into some stomach-turning favors, he will abandon his own wedding, in his single-minded obsession. Zoya seems more put-together at first, but she is just as careless, and perhaps more willfully so. From an early age, she is aware of her charms, amused by their effect, and completely willing to employ them to her benefit and enjoyment. Zoya is a girl rather in love with herself. Her lowest point is the exile to her aunt's house, where she isn't allowed to shine bright, be noticed or admired. Even when she falls for a guy, one senses that she likes him, at least in part, because of the sort of person she can be with him - strong, powerful, respected, of consequence. She doesn't love Kundan, but, in that frightening, potent scene where he tells her that he could have loved anybody else, her reaction tells us that she might not really want him to stop loving her. Both these characters' neuroses take interesting turns in the second half (quite different in tone from the first, but not disconnected; I saw it as a structural and tonal representation of the sort of all-consuming love depicted in the film - sunlit and buoyant even during trying times at first, and then darkening into a winter of hopeless, endless, often bitter longing.) 

Both leads rise to the challenge of bringing this complex, messy material to life. Dhanush, a celebrated actor in Tamil cinema, delivers one of the most compulsively watchable lead performances that I've seen in a while. He reminded me at times of a young Kamal Haasan (especially in a scene that directly nods to Sadma) and a young Shahrukh Khan, but really, he is unlike any leading man I've seen in Indian cinema. There isn't a thing he can't do. He is funny, scary, pathetic, charming, moving, moony. His dancing is a wonderful thing to behold. He makes heartbreak almost audible. Hindi is not his strong suit, but he manages to land profane one-liners  (the one about rubbing a snake on one's backside had me in splits) with merry aplomb. He managed to keep me rooting for Kundan, often in spite of myself. 

Sonam Kapoor's role is less crowd-pleasing, but it is also one of the best parts a young actress has gotten to play in recent mainstream Hindi movies. I rather enjoy Sonam, both offscreen and frequently on it, but even I wouldn't argue that she's shown major acting chops in anything prior to this. At her best, she was charming; at her worst, she could be flat and unmemorable. Despite the praise she's getting from film critics (perhaps for the first time since Delhi-6), I was not even a little bit prepared for the kind of work she's done in Raanjhanaa as Zoya. This is a breakthrough performance reminiscent of Aishwarya's in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam; one did not expect it and did not think it possible. 

Rai uses Sonam's plaintive little-girl voice and open, childlike smile to great effect in the scenes where she's playing a high-schooler. But he manages to work that air of entitlement, a brattiness of sorts, that one often sees in Sonam's acting (and public persona), into grown-up Zoya as well. Self-assured in her willowy glamour initially, Sonam clues us into Zoya's cocquettish little manipulations, her barely concealed delight at being desired (she has a great moment when she can barely suppress a smile as she walks away after slapping Dhanush), her great frustration at not getting her way with surprising facility. If Zoya in the first half has notes of Isabel Bradley and Daisy Buchanan in her personality, the post-intermission portions harden her brittle charms, and Sonam's work gets even more interesting. I wondered if I was grading the actress on a curve, but my companion, who doesn't understand Hindi, told me that he was impressed by how much venom she was able to get across just with those lovely, animated eyes. 

Together, Dhanush and Sonam are oddly electric. He sees nothing but her, this tall, well-off, educated Muslim girl who is clearly not meant to be his. She is amused, horrified, repelled by him, but can't quite do without him either. When he holds her, it looks painful, like he is trying to absorb her into him. We know that nothing good can come of love this misguided. But that doesn't make this film, with its big, bruised heart and its funny-sad-lovely ending, any less great.

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.

On "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani"

(Spoilers! Not explicit ones, but still!)

Ayaan Mukerji's sophomore feature possesses a number of annoying traits that are standard-issue in lesser Dharma movies. The first half indulges in way too much of the cornball humor so beloved of The House That KJo Built. Here, these bits are mostly centered around a vapid firang named Lara; they are sporadically funny but never inspired, and feel uneasily written in, a little cheapening even. The background score is wall-to-wall and sometimes intolerable. We get the tinkly fairy sounds and the swell of the orchestra in a romantic scene, we get sound effects straight out of 2003 in a comic scene, we get a creepy-ass chorus of children going  ooh and aah in scenes of wonder and discovery. Also, the film gives us the tomboy-to-girlie-girl makeover that we've seen in both Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Student of The Year. (The latter turned the spunky, interesting best-friend character into a kurta-clad homemaker whose unnecessary transformation is apparently explained by marriage and childbearing. I don't mind a female character dressing in a more stereotypically feminine manner, and boy, does Kalki Koechlin work the series of outfits that could probably cost as much as one of hubby Anurag's productions. But why, in 2013, are we still making lesbian jokes about a girl who doesn't wear pink? And why does the shift in her look need to be commented upon, as if it were an indispensable, highly desirable change? What else, one might ask resignedly, can one expect of a film where the female characters have their legs out in several costume changes on an uphill trek, while the males stay fully clad. Ugh, am I right?

Now that I've completely convinced you that this film is the no-good, very-bad kind, let me admit that, despite the litany of quibbles I've listen above, I really enjoyed Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. I know, you guys. I didn't see it coming either. The first half was pleasant , but rarely much more. Bookish Naina (Deepika Padukone) takes an impulsive trip to Manali with kids she knows from school, and falls for rakish Bunny as he expounds at length on his world-traveler ambitions. In the process, she loses the glasses, opens up, and learns how to have fun. It's basically a Disney Channel film with grown-up Bollywood stars, well-acted and travelogue-pretty. You worry that it is going to get worse, and you're going to be subjected to that insufferably played-out "love vs. everything else" conflict once again.
But, post-intermission, the film takes an unexpected turn for the better. It's as if Mukerji decided his writing needed to grow up just when his characters did. Bunny meets Naina again, eight years after the trek, at a friend's lavish destination wedding in Rajasthan. He's a travel journalist, she's a doctor. Amid the revelry - and there is quite a bit of revelry - sparks fly. 

In his tender debut, Wake Up Sid, Ayaan Mukerji kept plot minimal and unfussy, and patiently allowed his protagonists to find their place in the world. Here, too, the narrative is slight. Most of the heavy stuff happens offscreen. One of the characters loses a parent, another fails at making his passion project work, a third gives up on unrequited love and finds the requited kind. We don't see these life-changing moments happen, but we see how they've shaped Bunny and his friends. 

The early parts of the film didn't prepare me for how interesting the writing would get as the narrative unspooled. The initial reels tell us things they've already shown, and don't tell them in particularly original ways. Bunny waxes poetic about his love for traveling, calling it a "nasha" (addiction); his scrapbook, his wall-collage, and his own admissions have already driven home his globetrotting ambitions, though. Naina's love for Bunny is writ large on her face, but she, too, informs us in voiceover that she feels "ishq ka nasha." We get the sense, as one often does in these films about upper-class, westernized Mumbai youngsters, that the lines ought to have been in English. 

Thankfully, Mukerji mostly gives up on the clunky abstractions as the movie goes along. We now know who Bunny and Naina are, as do Bunny and Naina themselves; no more explication is necessary. Now the film lets its characters slowly rediscover each other, altered by eight years of experience. Bunny might be running away from significant baggage  on his voyages, but his choices aren't condemned. His friend Aditi (Kalki Koechlin, wonderfully unvarnished as usual) has made a surprising choice of her own, but, in a lovely revelation, we learn that her choice isn't a compromise. Naina's contentment with her life, her family, her medical practice is sweetly telegraphed; she doesn't need to, or want to, get away from her life, even for love's sake. Mukerji steers the film toward familiarly explosive filmi territory - a potential romantic rival (not Rahul Khanna, surprisingly) is introduced, the big wedding looks like it might fall apart at the mandap - and then calmly turns away. He isn't looking for explosions, and he isn't looking to punish his characters into an epiphany, either. Bunny isn't wrong for wanting to go places, and Naina isn't wrong for wanting to stay at home. They both know this, and they don't need to fight about it. They just need to figure all of it out. 

A plot this uneventful would be an interminable bore if the leads were flavorless. In a Ranbir Kapoor joint, however, you don't need to worry about the leading man's performance. By now we're all aware that Ranbir can do charming in his sleep. (Even the magnificent La Dixit, giving you your money's worth even before the film properly gets going, looks entirely delighted by his shenanigans in the rousing Ghagra number.) He is by turns glib and goofy. He flirts with everyone, he GQs it all over Paris, he sings, and dances his way through a series of songs that may not stand alone memorably, but look and sound terrific in the theater. But he is sharpest when the film asks more of him than easy likability. In the scene where Bunny finds Naina in dishy male company, Ranbir goes from pleased to pissy with an almost scary absence of effort. He also gets fine moments with Farooque Shaikh and Tanvi Azmi (Mukerji has a gift when it comes to writing and casting beautifully believable parents.) My favorite moment in the film is the one in which Farooque Shaikh, one of the all-time greats at onscreen geniality, says goodbye to his U.S.-bound son. This scene is saved for the end in a marvelously effective bit of non-linear storytelling, and it has an aching realness to it. Not gonna lie, I cried a little.

In my piece on why I was ambivalent about the film, I wrote quite a bit about why I was worried about Deepika Padukone's performance. But as Naina, Deepika finally manages to overcome the banality that has plagued her in many of her non-glamazon roles. It helps that this is a good part, not a stock love-interest role. Naina doesn't pine away when the love of her life leaves. She develops friendships, she builds a career, she buys a killer wardrobe of sexy lehengas and flattering salwar-kurtas. Deepika gets just about all of it right. She conveys Naina's initial tentativeness, her quiet sorrow at having lived a cloistered life, and the wonder of first love with such warmth that it isn't at all hard to empathize with her as we once did with Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  She still acts better with that luminous face than with her voice, but her line readings here don't give you the impression that she painstakingly memorized her dialogue and is trying to say them just right. 

Deepika also generates tremendous chemistry with Ranbir. He plays it so that Bunny seems drawn to Naina even before she joyously finds her mojo (and killer white shorts) in the Balam Pichkari song. And who coud blame the dude when Deepika looks so radiantly moonstruck around him? When he pulls her in for a dance, and wants to hold her for five more minutes, it is both swoony and sad.

There is quite a bit that irked me about YJHD, but even more that surprised and impressed me. It is a pleasurable little movie that is determined to give you a good time while managing a surprising amount of depth and maturity. I kinda loved it.

The Bling Ring: Thoughts on Indian Celebrity Fashion at Cannes

There are two big celebrity fashion events that I look forward to every year. The first is the Met Gala. The Met Gala is legit. I live for the Met Gala. This is one red carpet where safe, foolproof looks are actively discouraged and celebrities are encouraged to let their fashion-freak flag fly. I love seeing timidly clueless celebrities giving their Joan-Rivers-approved sheath dresses and lacy mermaid gowns a miss for one night and trying their best to interpret the crazy/undoable theme. (This year, for the punk theme, SJP wore a mohawk-style headpiece and thigh-high boots. It was fantastic.)

The second big celebrity fashion circus I follow avidly is the Cannes film festival. The look here is movie-star glamour.  You've got to go big or go home. With yards of film stars and wannabes jostling for attention all over the Croisette, Cannes is the place to bring your biggest gowns, your biggest jewels, your most memorable fashion. And it's in Europe, which means the fashion is, once again, not as snoozy and safe as the typical Hollywood red carpet. 

The other great thing about Cannes is that I get to see Bollywood stars doing the hokey-pokey alongside international movie icons. The two fixtures on the circuit, of course, are Aishwarya Rai and Sonam Kapoor, who are ambassadors for L'oreal. I have a weakness for both these ladies, and this year, they were joined by another one of my favorites, Vidya Balan. Fun! 

The Sabyasachi Problem

As Sonam Kapoor pointed out in an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Vidya is not at Cannes to shill gowns or makeup, unlike Sonam herself. She is there as member of the jury, and she gets to do awesome things like chill with the delightful Christoph Waltz and be one of the first people to watch the latest collaboration between Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding-Refn.

But Vidya clearly didn't want to go unnoticed style-wise either. Her outfits, designed by Sabyasachi, seem to have been put together deliberately to attract attention and inspire discussion.

I have a lot of love for Vidya's first two looks at the festival. The red lehenga she wore on arriving in Cannes was simple and elegant, and the demurely understated styling worked perfectly with the outfit. The next look, a stunning white-and-gold saree, was also a winner, and, once more, the pulled-back-hair-with-neutral-face formula worked, though I'd have zhuzhed up the face with some color. Both looks were just a little unexpected, while being firmly within Vidya's style wheelhouse.

At the Great Gatsby premiere, however, Vidya decided to take things to a more flamboyant level, in a pale lehenga and a major necklace. The dupatta on her head became a major talking point. (For real. I've read comments arguing that by putting the dupatta on her head, Vidya portrayed India as regressive and "backwards." SMH. SMH so hard.) See, in theory, I love that she gave us drama. But with the veil and the volume in the lehenga and its big-ass border and the full sleeves and the Nehru-waistcoat blouse, it's all a bit . . . too much. And not too much in the wonderful Cannes way. It was a stuffy, visually unbalanced look, and it had no color in it. Instead of giving us Indian-princess realness, Vidya ended up in dowager raajmaata territory. My fixes? I'd have kept the dupatta on her head, given her softer hair, maybe a braid, gotten rid of the headmistress choli and replaced it with something that showed at least some collarbone and had shorter sleeves. Oh, and I'd have added some color to that gorgeous face. You've got to give her credit, though. She was working the whole "Her Serene Highness" schtick as well as she could.

The next day, at the Young and Beautiful screening, Vidya brought back the tight hair, the neutral face, and the Amish blouse, much to my chagrin. By way of drama, she added the nathni. Oh my god, the nathni. The nathni was the bane of the Bollywood-loving corner of Twitter for a millisecond. Do I hate the nathni? No. (Reminder: I love drama.) But that focus-stealing piece of jewelry did not belong on a woman who was wearing a madly uncomfortable-looking blouse and tastefully funereal makeup. It belonged on somebody else. We will get to who that was in a second. At any rate, this look would have been much better, nose-ring and all, if Sabyasachi had let Vidya's upper half and scalp breathe.

Let's talk about Sabyasachi for a bit. Sabyasachi is one of my favorite Indian designers. He makes gorgeous use of traditional textiles and motifs, and his clothes are a refreshing alternative to the glitter-gun-happy stuff that Manish Malhotra, that other Bollywood favorite, keeps spinning out year after year. But I am not sure if I'd have styled Vidya the way he did. (Call me if you wanna change things up, Vids!) Sabya styles his beautiful clothes in order to create particular characters and tell specific stories. This approach worked spectacularly when he took model and Miss India Kanishta Dhanker to Cannes. But Vidya is not a model. She is not a clotheshorse. Her appearances should have foregrounded her versatile persona - as an Indian actor and movie star in the 21st century - instead of the Sabya vision, as interesting as that vision may be. Sabya has said something to the effect that he wanted Vidya to look like a maharani at Cannes. That intent is evident. Does she look gorgeous, glamorous even? Absolutely. Could she have looked more her age, more herself? Again, absolutely. After all, this is a woman who has done a terrific job of sexing up the saree, wearing her woven silks with loose hair, scarlet lips, and plunging blouses all over Indian red carpets. I don't know if styling her with scraped-back hair, zamidarni-style blouses, and neutral makeup was the way to go, even if that may be Sabyasachi's favored look of the moment. It's not your moment, Sabya.

Thankfully, Vidya did Vidya for her next appearance. A delicious traditional handloom silk, a less restrictive blouse, more relaxed hair, and a brighter face. It wasn't anything we hadn't seen before, but it was a look Vidya owns like nobody else.

I didn't hate the red saree look at all, but if you're going to dress a 35-year-old woman like Gayatri Devi, shouldn't you dress her up like young Gayatri Devi? I mean, even the Maharani rocked a bob and short-sleeved blouses and flirty chiffons. Here, too, The Blouse That Ate Planet Earth took the look down a few notches. And a beautiful movie star at a film festival ought, I think, to avoid politician's-wife hair and makeup.

I don't think Vidya wore anything she should be ashamed of (not that anyone of us ought to be ashamed of what we wear, unless it has, like, hate speech scrawled on it, or is made of baby pandas.) She looked stunning throughout, and provided us with a bunch of memorable looks. I know she's perfectly happy with Sabya dressing her 24/7, but, as somebody who likes clothes and likes looking at Vidya, I'd love to see her switch it up from time to time. I'm not saying she needs to. But it'd be rad if she did. Anyway. You did good, lady. Now look fabulous at the closing ceremonies and shoot me a text about who won the Palme D'or.

Of Capes and Cake Dresses

Sonam, who was there only to model pretty clothes, brought her A-game. Sonam knows fashion. She actually collects and curates, and I have a feeling she isn't dressing merely to look presentable or attractive, but for the sheer love of the design and artistry that goes into beautiful clothing. She is unafraid to wear risky, polarizing stuff or to look a little ridiculous. Hence, her red carpet appearances at Cannes, for which she gets to pull archival pieces and to have things custom-designed for her, tend to be serious eye-candy.

DRAMA

She went big right from the start, in an Anamika Khanna saree with a stunningly dramatic sci-fi-y cape. And, of course, the nathni, which several people hated, but I LOVED. (If I'd been styling Vidya, I would have skipped the nose-ring once I saw Sonam wearing one. It's an unconventional piece of jewelry, and nobody needs to think Vidya effing Balan copied Sonam Kapoor.) Sonam knew that the nathni would be a focus-puller, so she wore no other jewelry, pulled the hair back, and let that great face do all the work. Sleek, chic, desi, and modern, all at once. You may love or loathe the look, but you can't deny its impact.

Enormous ballgowns are de rigeur at Cannes. In custom Dolce and Gabbana, referred to by the wonderful Shakila at GetFilmy as "the cake dress,"Sonam served up amazing gown porn. Despite the fit issues at the bust, this was another home-run. Sonam's makeup game has improved considerably in the recent past, and her face was just about perfect at all her appearances.

Queen of the Instagram Selfies

Before taking off, Sonam also worked an adorable Elie Saab frock at the opening dinner (expert dress-wearer Dita Von Teese wore the same dress a couple days later, and I'd say that she didn't wear it as well as Sonam), and repped her friend Shehlaa in an Indian-princess-gone-goth lehenga. The latter was perhaps her least successful look this time around. The hair was a bit off, and the lehenga (like quite a few of Shehlaa's clothes), while exquisitely embroidered and detailed, had a slightly dated silhouette.

I'd say the Kapoorlet totally won the red carpet, as she is wont to do. But then, as many will point out, it's not her style cred that's ever been in question. Ahem.

Return of The Face

Aishwarya has never been a fashion girl, and she has lately stuck to nondescript or totally hideous clothes for her rare appearances back on home turf. But she can be relied upon to really bring it at Cannes.* Ash is one of the queens of Cannes. She's been going for more than a decade, the photographers love her, and she always gives them something worth photographing. Also, she seems to really loosen up at Cannes. Gone is the Bachchan-bahu stiffness. She flirts, winks, blows kisses, and it's all fantastic.

When I heard Ash was wearing Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla to Cannes, I was disappointed. Abu-Sandeep make beautifully embellished clothes that look splendid on women like Deepika Padukone and Shweta Bachchan. But they unfailingly put Ash in blingy tents that do nothing for the actor. Besides, I wanted Aishwarya in Elie Saab!

Thankfully, I got my wish, and Ash turned up at the Inside Llewyn Davis premiere in a delightful Elie confection. The hair was gorgeous (some wanted an updo, but I thought that the soft, burnished waves were rather lovely with the romantic gown) and her makeup, of late so heavy-handed, was dewy and charming.

Ash did wear Abu-Sandeep next, and it was my least favorite appearance of hers this time around. The long anarkali was actually much nicer than the ones they usually stick poor Ash in, but it didn't fall too well on her, and I thought that the center-parted waves just added volume to an already-heavy look. Her look in Sabyasachi was better, although I feel like we've seen this gold-on-black baroque-inspired lehenga saree with the headband a million times already. (Kalki owned the hell out of a variation on the look in Marrakech.) Ash fared better in the high-neck blouse than Vidya,  however.

A good-ish run so far, but the next look gave me the best kind of chills. I usually don't like satin/sateen, but Ash was a GODDESS in the teal Armani Privé. I adored the shocking fuchsia lips, the sculptural hairdo, and all the primo face she was giving. The woman gives such great face. Just look.

Sigh.

The gold Tahiliani saree at the AmfAR gala was on theme, and since the designer was being showcased in the AmfAR fashion show, it was a sweet way to show support. But I'd have swapped out the gold blouse for a different color. Too much gold. I feel like all the rich desi aunties will be replicating this look at the winter weddings. Also, I'd have let the hair down. Again, the face won the day for Ash. It just feels like forever since we've seen it, no? The makeup and clothes back in India are so overwhelming that the face just gets lost and one forgets how ridiculous it is.

Scraps and Ribbons

Amitabh Bachchan worked some Vegas style in a bedazzled tux at the Gatsby premiere. It was all sorts of cray, but dude's seventy, and he can wear whatever he likes. Nandita Das, member of the short film jury, stayed true to her easy, effortless personal style in a series of lovely, unfussy sarees and suits. Mallika Sherawat turned up for reasons unknown to me (a lot of starlet-types turn up at Cannes for no reason aside from partying on rich men's yachts, though. Have you read this? Shadytown.) She wore a few perfectly fine dresses, but lady's seriously lost her mojo. No vamping, barely any smiling - it's all a bit depressing, to be honest. Ameesha Patel wore a couple tired-ass Manish Malhotra lehengas that everyone in Bollywood has already worn, but looked nicer than she has in a decade.

GAH. As usual, I wrote way too much about way too little.** The gist of this Bible-length piece is basically that pretty people wore pretty clothes. The moral of the story is: add some bling to your facial situation. Total conversation starter.

* Except in 2003, when she went as jury member. Since then, though, she's had a pretty stellar run. But the showbiz media persist in their "fashion disaster at Cannes" tag for her. (Ever notice how reluctant they are about updating celebrity narratives, though? They're still doing stutter jokes about Shahrukh Khan. Darr was two decades ago. I know.)

** If you've stuck this far with me, dear reader, I swear solemnly on Sharmila Tagore's bouffant that coming posts will be short and succinct. Or, at the very least, shorter and succinct-er.

Summer Lovin' (Part One): Random Thoughts Inspired By "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani"

I can't get enough of great Bollywood love stories. Like, literally. They don't make enough of those.

Straight-up romances have never been the staple genre in mainstream Hindi films. The love stuff has traditionally been one of the many spices in the masala blend. In recent years, there's been an even greater move away from romances. Action-comedies have been the big earners, and the love story at the heart of these films have generally been between the forty-something male superstar and his adoring audience. Karan Johar, that famed filmi miner of the heart, has lamented that there hasn't been an iconic Bollywood love story for this young century.

It hasn't been a completely dry spell, of course. Millennial audiences have annually gotten a successful, memorable romance-centric movie or two. Kareena Kapoor is probably super thankful that Jab We Met turned her career around in 2007, but the rest of us are pretty glad it exists too. Jodhaa Akbar (2008) is still spawning sepia-ed gifs of Ash and Hrithik doing some coy Mughal-flavored flirting on Tumblr. 2010's Band Baaja Baaraat gave us Ranveer Singh (for whom I thank the universe everyday) and one of the best onscreen kisses in Hindi film history.The divisive Rockstar (2011), but for Nargis Fakhri's woeful performance, was an excellent entry into the canon of Bollywood romances.

In 2013, however, we don't just have one potential breakout in the pretty-young-famous-people-falling-in-love-onscreen genre. We have several. Something happened in the past couple years that prompted a bunch of talented young filmmakers to decide that 2013 was going to be Bollywood's annus pyarabilis. (I wish I were more sorry for that phrase than I am.)  Audiences have already lapped up the soggy, weakly reviewed, song-heavy Aashiqui 2, the year's biggest runaway success so far. But things are only getting bigger and better in the coming months for love-lovers, and I'm excited? Is everybody else excited? Good. Now let's play this fun game where I speculate, purely based on their trailers and promos, on the quality of these films. First out of the gate is Dharma's Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone.

If you were a desi kid back in the early 2000s, you might remember how exciting those big films, with the sangeet song and the party song and the gorgeous costumes and the huge stars (usually SRK), were. They used to come out during Eid or Christmas, and they were Bollywood's version of a tentpole. That sort of film has gone out of style over the years, and going by the first trailer of YJHD, I thought this film was updating that frothy, glamorously feel-good aesthetic, adding to it some youthfulness and self-awareness and subtracting some seriously iffy leading-man costume choices. The visuals looked crisp and glossy, the snatches of the soundtrack used in the trailer sounded awesome, and the cast looked like it was having a grand old time.

But with each subsequent promo has somewhat deflated my excitement for the film. YJHD is directed by Ayaan Mukerji, who made the winsome Wake Up Sid! with Ranbir in 2008. His debut feature managed to be that rare straight-rich-guy-finding-himself narrative that managed the feat of not annoying the crap out of me. The film was helped by a light, everyday-ish touch and Konkona Sen Sharma who, by virtue of being one of India's greatest living actresses instead of a standard-issue starlet, elevated Mukerji's slight narrative and generated some lovely chemistry with Ranbir.

YJHD of course has the far more conventional pair of Deepika and Ranbir. Ranbir seems to be playing straight-rich-dude-finding-himself again, except this time he's surer of what he wants to do. Based on the song promo for "Kabira" (a really, really good number), what he wants to do involves filming stuff* on moving vehicles in foreign countries while going from fulfilled to pensive. Am I the only one reminded of Saif in Love Aaj Kal's "Main Kya Hoon?" where he's all bright and Dharma-y in the beginning but goes all dark and Adajania-y by the end? A lot about this film reminds me of that relatively underrated Imtiaz Ali film, actually, but I digress.

The promos are Ranbir-heavy, and he's clearly bringing all his goofy charm. But I'm not sure how much I like prettified Ranbir anymore.**  He's much more interesting to watch, and certainly much more attractive, when he's a little rough around the edges. By now, I'm pretty certain that Ranbir is a top-notch actor, versatile, witty, and thoughtful, and I will watch him in anything. But this bit, where he tells Deepika's character how cool she is, while she stares at him, all lovelorn? It's clearly supposed to be incredibly romantic, but it doesn't work for me. It might even read a little condescending. Just to be clear, I think Ranbir's going to be great in this, I just wonder if this sort of role is now a bit too easy for him.

The trailer itself made me nervous about Deepika's character, "chashmish-Naina," who takes off her glasses and finds volumizing conditioner at some point in the movie, and becomes "Deepika-Naina" - as in, a super-hot Amazon with legs for miles. All the promos since then have highlighted Ranbir, to the point that, in the "Dilliwaali Girlfriend" number, Deepika's choreography is not much more than stalking around with her hands on her hips and wiggling her chest from time to time, while Ranbir does his charismatic, livewire thing around her. Cocktail proved to me that Deepika's acting could be as compelling as her movie-goddess looks, but I've also realized that she is painfully limp whenever she is cast as the ordinary girl-next-door foil to her leading men. Deepika is best when she is allowed to play magnetic, slightly wicked women who are hyper-aware of their charms and not afraid to exercise them. She's not a particularly rangy actress, but she's got star quality, and she shines when outfitted with the kind of role that lets her work her supermodel looks and preternatural poise. In fact, her best moments in the YJHD footage so far has been in those brief scenelets when she dances up on Kalki in "Balam Pichkari" and "Dilliwaali Girlfriend." The look she gives Our Lady of Kashyap in the latter is pure sex.***

At any rate, her role in YJHD seems to basically involve waiting around while Ranbir finds himself (I promise this is the last time I use this phrase), realizes that travelling around filming stuff on moving vehicles is no good when you don't have true love in your life, and comes back to her. Maybe she gets to marry Rahul Khanna for a bit while she waits. What I'm saying, in this tediously roundabout manner, is that a boring heroine doesn't make for a compelling romance.

You know what else doesn't make for a compelling romance, at least the Bollywood kind? Meh music. YJHD's music is far from meh, but it's got that overproduced Pritam vibe that makes it work very well in a trailer and less so when each song is heard in its entirety. (The aforementioned "Kabira" is kind of an exception.) To wit, "Balam Pichkari" sounds like the perfect song of summer - fizzy and irrepressibly catchy - when you listen to the bit in the promo, but the digitized, cleaned-up vocals get boring after a while if you listen to the whole song. There's almost invariably too much going on in Pritam's music; he can craft an crazy earwormy, dance-ready tune, but his penchant for those generic EDM production values keep at bay a certain sweetness and earnestness that you need for the soundtrack in a film like this.

Even the way these songs have been filmed lacks a certain vim, a certain imagination, a certain "bigness." KJo gets a lot of flak for a lot of things, but people don't realize how boss he is at doing things not a lot of other filmmakers can't do, like filming the shit out of a song-and-dance number. His films pop on screen like few big-budget Bollywood productions. Even the choreography here is a little . . . lacking (except for one notable exception, which I'll get to in a bit.) Ranbir is a great dancer, and I get that the film is about him, and that Ayaan and he are best friends, but if you've cast Deepika Padukone in your film, let her dance, for Helen's sake. Let her dance!

What I feel about the songs is basically what I feel about this film in general. I like how it looks, but I feel like it could have been so much more. I want to watch it, but I know I could be much more excited. I wish it did more with its superficial trappings (Manish Mallhotra, how dare you give Deepika the low-rent version of Bebo's K3G sharara? I mean, she looks amazing, but still. Be less lazy, Manish Malhotra. Oh, and tell your nephew not to eff up Bebo's new movie.) I wish the narrative seemed a little a little bit less familiar, or at least treated in a less familiar, more heartfelt manner.

Wow. I've gone pretty hard on this film without even having watched it. But I'll happily eat crow if it proves me wrong, and subverts the slight genericness of its promos into something clever and moving and original. I want it to succeed! I want it to be good! I really do!

Anyway, YJHD has one feature that is worth the price of a ticket, several times over. Behold.

Seriously, I will watch a film with Mimoh and Ameesha Patel in the lead if it means I get to see Madhuri Dixit in all her queenly glory.

Next up: I get all judgy about Raanjhanaa. Everybody hates Sonam Kapoor. Do I hate Sonam Kapoor? We'll find out.

*What's with Ayaan's protagonists and cameras? Let's have a hero find himself in accounting or plastic surgery next time, 'kay?

**His eyebrows and hairline have been manicured and, er, refreshed a little too aggressively. Not the best look for him.

***So Deepika totally has better chemistry with her female co-stars than her leading men, right? If Cocktail were all DPad and Diana, I'd have liked that film SO much better. Also, the Koffee With Karan interview with Sonam was crackling. Like, they were finishing each other's sentences. I will always mourn the premature demise of that promising frenemyship.

On Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby"

If you haven't been scared away by the loud, gaudy, Fergie-laden TV spots already, be warned. Give Baz Luhrmann's latest a wide berth if you're looking for a quietly respectful, conventionally tasteful, prestige-picture adaptation of The Great Gatsby. You'll have much better luck (and a much duller time) with the tepidly elegant version from the seventies.

This Gatsby is a wonder. It is often marvelously good entertainment, and even more frequently a grandly mournful thing. It lurches drunkenly sometimes between the frantic fun of it all and the big, blue sadness at the heart of the story it wants to tell. One worries if the whole ambitious enterprise, with its gleefully unashamed visual fakery and its brassy, anachronistic soundtrack, is going to come crashing down around the burnished ears of its beautiful lead players. But it never slips completely, and stays engrossing for the entirety of its generous run- time.

The makers don't toy much with the structure or content of the novel (except for adding an unfortunate and unnecessary framing device, in which Nick Carraway is shown writing the novel at a sanatorium. Even as he voices Fitzgerald's words, they leap, redundantly and stupidly, off his typewritten pages and onto the screen.) Carraway recounts the story of how he met Jay Gatsby, owner of a mysterious fortune and many beautiful shirts. Gatsby has bought an enormous Long Island estate, where he throws vast parties and generates wild rumors about himself, right across the bay from the Buchanans, a young married couple of pedigreed fortune. As it turns out, Mrs. Buchanan, Carraway's cousin, is Gatsby's old flame, and he wants her back. The setting is at once a wonderland and a waste. Most of the characters are either monstrously privileged or of shady provenance. Almost everyone behaves badly.

Luhrmann doesn't need to tinker with the story to make this cinematic iteration of the book entirely his own. The film takes time to get there, but Luhrmann's vision clicks loudly into place in the lurid party scene at Myrtle's apartment, filmed in the color-drenched, acid-trip style so beloved of the director. The camera weaves madly in and out of the chaos to bring us into the experience of a very drunk Nick who, at one point, spies himself outside in the street, looking up at him. He is the observer even as he has finally been forced to participate. The relationship between the observer and the observed was at the heart of Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, where the writer falls headlong in love with the performer onstage - a courtesan who seems, despite her profession, impossibly perfect to him. That dynamic is foregrounded in Gatsby, too, making his version curiously singular. The primary love story here is the one between Carraway and Gatsby. Carraway watches Gatsby, awestruck, as the latter narrates how he conjured himself out of nothing, as he moves confidently through various glittering, mindless hordes, as he falls valiantly to pieces. Nick, like Moulin Rouge's Christian, is a writer, albeit one who has set aside his artistic ambitions. He, too, falls in love with a performer. James Gatz heroically acts the monumental role of Jay Gatsby, and Nick can't tear his eyes away, though he knows that his idol, the crook in whom he perceives an uncorrupted soul, is doomed. I wonder if Luhrmann is perhaps projecting a personal love of movie stars - those glamorous shadows, both mercenary and idealized, with whom our love affair is magical and tragically brief - onto the stories he chooses to film. At any rate, Luhrmann realizes the equation between Carraway and his hero (played with warm chemistry by DiCaprio and Maguire, who brings to Nick an effective mixture of lost-boy creepiness and wide-eyed empathy) with the kind of nuance that many, for whom Carraway is rather flat even on the page, would not have thought possible. The successful fleshing out of Carraway renders the framing-device nonsense even more egregious, and adds unforgivable minutes to a film that, in spite of all its candied frenzy, moves at a stately pace, and could have benefitted from a good fifteen minutes of trimming.

The film may overstay its welcome, but I found not much else else to dislike about it. The digital wizardry that I was so skeptical about allows the film an air of macabre enchantment, but also gives it a plasticky vulgarity when required. The party scenes, with their whirling, Prada- clad extras and their wall-to-wall musical flourishes, are seductive and sickening. You want to be in that drunk, thrashing crowd, but you also know you might feel lonely and tired and sad at the end of all the revelry.

All of it would come to naught, of course, if Gatsby himself were boring or unconvincing. But Dicaprio is winningly unbowed by the pressure of playing American literature's most iconic man. I've been growing a little tired of the actor's grimacing and brooding, all of it done expertly, of course, in film after film. But here, he is excellent. He brings a beating heart to Gatsby; the shadows of the character are fuller in his performance, the lights more lively. (And those eyes haven't been bluer since Romeo+Juliet.) His best moment is when he comes in from the rain, terrified and eager and in pain, to see Daisy after five years. The tremulousness is unexpectedly out in the open and just right.

When I'd fantasy-cast Gatsby, Carey Mulligan was my pick for Daisy. The British actress certainly has the sweet, expensive prettiness for the part. But Mulligan is surprisingly reticent early on, keeping the charm turned down when you'd expect it to be at full, fluttery blast. But when Daisy meets Gatsby in Carraway's cottage, Mulligan comes thrillingly alive. She uses her sweet, sorrowful face to full effect in DiCaprio's arms, or when her lover and her husband (Joel Edgerton, who plays Tom Buchanan with a boar-like ugliness and heft) tussle over her. Amitabh Bachchan (the Indian acting legend whom Luhrmann cast in the part of a Jewish gangster because . . . he could?) is reliably witty, and Elizabeth Debicki, arch and dismissively sexy as Jordan Baker, is a find.

Gatsby is going to be a widely hated film. Several critics have damned it for its excesses, for its shallowness, for its lack of reverence for its source material. It is certainly excessive, refusing to maintain a chilled, ironic distance from the unhinged, amoral celebrations it depicts. This is a film that wants to have a grand time, never mind reverence. But it is also a work of sustained sadness, aware of the tragedy that awaits not just at the story's end, but around every corner. I walked out of the theater, feeling an inevitable and not unpleasant sort of melancholy, much like I had when I first read The Great Gatsby at fourteen. I am not suggesting, of course, that this imperfect film is an artistic equal to that gemlike book. But it is certainly a memorable thing in its own, vigorously odd fashion.