Qarib Qarib Singlle: An Irrfan-Parvathy enable rom-com
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Parvathy, Bajrangbali Singh
Rated: 8/10
He looks unkempt, dirty and tousled. Like an urchin at his worst. He slurps through his tea cups and loves the pakodas and kebabs straight off unhygienic carts. Yet he travels business class, drives around in a Merc, takes the Orient Express to Rajasthan and is as irreverent about money as you may be about those without it. He has girlfriends down the years and you wonder why did they never insist he take a bath, shave, comb his hair and somehow be less of an OTT character than he is, wearing an attitude as gaudy as his clothes.
She, on the other hand, is his direct opposite — an urbane, polished, understated, well-mannered, well-read Tamilian woman. A working widow who takes life seriously and is too proper to think about men after her husband passes away. Yet she is bored enough to hesitatingly go to a dating website to look for some serious mirth in her life.
That’s how the two meet and grow on you despite being a totally impossible couple and relationship. But director Tanuja Chandra, back after a long hiatus from mainstream cinema, makes a virtue out of this mismatched jodi and brings to you a differently enabled, dishy and pulsating rom-com with nothing flashy and yet everything compelling you to believe in and be with this odd couple.
Only Irrfan Khan could have done justice to this totally off-putting hero’s role and he does it with such naturalness that you are compelled to like him, even if you are not exactly able to love him through his crazy veneer. The same happens to Jayashree TK, or Jaya Sasidharan, played brilliantly by Malayalam actress Parvathy. All responses are real, all happenings commonplace. Parvathy thinks she would be out of her mind to even look at a character as flamboyant (in a bad way) as Irrfan. Yet she grows to first tolerate, then adjust to his quirks and eccentricities and only then gradually schools herself to like him.
Chandra’s moments in the film are winners, and there are lots and lots of them to sustain you through a grown-up romance on a virtual road-trip to discovery. Really, he is just too outrageous for even an interlude, let alone a long-term relationship. Totally rustic, snoring midway into phone conversations, taking the wrong trains, missing flights and even making Jaya go meet his exes strewn across India from Hardwar to Rajasthan to Gangtok and all as different from each other as chalk is from cheese.
Thank you Tanuja Chandra for bringing such a delightful and differently enabled heartbeat to us! We need more of Paravthy in Bollywood. Irrfan, we thankfully already have.
Source: 12 November, 2017