REVIEW: Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai

A NOVEL ROMANCE

Richard Linklater has done this very successfully. Twice. Both Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) are thoroughly engrossing and entertaining two-character films. A young man and woman meet on a train, get off at Vienna and spend one day and night in each other's company. The same couple accidentally meets in Paris nine years later and spends another afternoon together, picking up from where they'd parted quite seamlessly. A large part of the credit went to Julie Delphy and Ethan Hawke, who not only wrote their own dialogues, but acted so brilliantly, they looked thoroughly spontaneous on screen.

Now Satish Rajwade employs the same device for his Marathi film Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai with moderate success. A young woman (Mukta Barve) arrives in Pune from Mumbai. She's searching for a particular address and runs into a young man (Swapnil Joshi) who's playing cricket with his friends. He gives her directions and then runs into her again after a while at a grocer's shop where she's come to make a phone call. They start off bickering with each other about the socio-cultural and attitudinal differences between people from Mumbai and Pune (an old topic of conflict between natives of the two cities) and then, for no apparent reason, he continues following her. 

She too plays along, although the primary purpose of her visit is to meet a prospective groom -- his house is locked, her phone's battery has run dry and there's no way of establishing contact -- and needs to meet him in person to tell him she's not interested in the proposal. Meanwhile, she continues to argue with this stranger who seems determined to stick with her through the day. They don't know each others' names, but by the time he drops her off at Pune station to catch her train back home, they know a lot about each others' lives -- about the people they loved and lost, their views on relationships and marriage, their attitudes and peculiarities of behaviour.   

It's an interesting premise. Mukta Barve is a fine actress and Swapnil Joshi is serviceable (though he tends to overact intermittently). What drags the film down somewhat is the screenplay and dialogues (by Rajwade and Parag Kulkarni). For two people to continue a conversation through the entire length of a film, and for it to look dramatic enough to engage the audience, they need to progress from one topic to another seamlessly. But Rajwade's protagonists spend considerable time on fighting about which of their cities is better, using cliches which may seem novel only to non-Marathi audiences. 

A lot could've been achieved through such an interaction between strangers who are both strong personalities, outspoken and full of ideas. You could gauge the pulse of a generation and its preoccupations through their exchanges. And the director does achieve that to some extent in the second half. But there's nothing in the material that makes you sit up, take notice, and wonder about the future of these two random souls who've been thrown together into a film that's enjoyable while it lasts, but leaves little to think about when it's over.

Comments

[sameer gandhi]

cool....one of the best movie from marathi film industry....
watched 5 times already....swapnil has done gr8 job...he has put absolutely 100% efforts...hats of to swapnil....mukta too done gr8 work...satish rajwade the director ...wat to say...we want to see more movies from him...good luck...