Gehraiyaan Movie Review: Match lost

A still from `Gehraiyaan`

Gehraiyaan
On: Amazon Prime Video
Dir: Shakun Batra
Cast: Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday, Siddhant Chaturvedi
Rating: 1/5

I WATCHED Gehraiyaan after a long day at work on Friday night. I didn't need for it to be a perfect movie, but I wished it was going to be entertaining, heartfelt and gripping. The only expectations I was going in with was that I had liked director Shakun Batra's work on the documentary about Ma Sheela's trip to India, and that the trailers and glimpses of the movie had made me hopeful about Padukone and Chaturvedi's chemistry. I also hoped that we were finally talking about modern-day dysfunctional relationships, and what we do to make ourselves feel loved again.

It was neither of the things I had wished for it to be.

An hour into the movie, I had a nagging feeling in my brain, that I had witnessed the whole plot somewhere before. And then, it came like a bolt. It was "inspired" by Woody Allen's 2005 movie, Match Point, starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Emily Mortimer and Matthew Goode. The plot of this underrated gem is loosely something like this: Tennis coach Meyers strikes a friendship with wealthy boy Goode, and then starts dating his sister, Mortimer. He eventually gets a job at Mortimer's father's company, and they get married. At a party, he also meets Johansson who is dating Goode, and they are attracted to each other. They begin an affair, and sleep together after Johansson is livid after a fight with Goode's mother, who has a problem with her job as a struggling actor. They thus begin a torrid affair. Johansson eventually breaks up with Goode, but gets pregnant by Myers. She calls him in the middle of a family outing to tell him that. Myers can't risk getting his perfect life upset by an affair. What happens next as Myers is easy to predict with Myers killing off Johansson, and somehow with a stroke of luck that throws the detectives off as well, getting on with life.

Now, if you have already watched the movie, then the similarities will strike you right away. The only tweaks are made to the endings, and who is killed off. And of course, there is a back story given to Padukone, Pandey, and Chaturvedi's characters to make them seem the sum of their past and parents' mistakes. But it doesn't translate in anyone other than maybe Padukone. Chaturvedi, as steamy as he may be as Zain, and as much as he was a hit as Sher in Gully Boy, can't grapple with the complexities of being a manipulative, conniving, complex, yet charming, yet confused, flawed, and yet beautiful boy-not-yet-a-man we needed him to be. He's fails at the F''' boy trope, without the soul and the motivation the character needs. He seems less attractive as the movie progresses thanks to his fumbling, and we wonder why two women are ready to change their life for this loser. We need a man we could hate, but we also couldn't help but love. And that's not Chaturvedi.

Pandey tries her best, but her character looks worried all through out, and we don't see her motivation for hanging on to Zain. She feels hollow, and I didn't end up empathising with her at all, or even relating to her. And as far as Karan, played by Dhairya Karwa, who essays the character of Padukone's boyfriend, well, except the two jokes he cracks, I couldn't care if he was there in the movie or not.

Padukone makes us feel for her, even though at one point we wonder how a smart, and gorgeous yoga instructor, can have such bad luck with men. Well, then yes, the back story comes into play--you get the love you think you deserve and all that. In the last hour, when she cries, she makes us feel her helplessness. But why does she cry for Zain? Or care that she is pregnant with his baby? I really don't know. The fact that the director never goes into the details of why the couple falls in love, other than through beach montages set to indie music, is sorely a minus. Their chemistry wears off soon enough.

But the main problem I have with this movie, is that it's inspired to the point that the line between a direct copy and "inspiration" is pretty blurred. And if it had to be done that way, I wish Batra would have got his own sensibilities, and humour to the screenplay. It aims to be conversational like Woody Allen's movies are, but it desperately lacks humour, which Allen has a skill for. His characters usually drop truth bombs about life, in a poetic funny way that we are left smirking: ya, this is what life is like. If it was meant to pay homage to Match Point, then like Match Point, it should have been an eerie thriller, that keeps us guessing till the last moment. But it dillies and dallies, and floats and tries to be like a wave that comes and goes. Nope. Didn't work.

My favourite two minutes of the movie is the final two minutes: When Padukone's character realises that she can't move on even if she wants to.

Well, we can, thankfully. To another movie. To another TV show.