Tum Mile

Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Soha Ali Khan, VJ Mantra
The movie is rich with moments. It is a layered story of the protagonists who meet, depart and meet again and are given the luxury to re-examine their decisions.. Opportunity strikes twice and in the context of cinematic fiction the second time the players make no mistake. Director Kunal Deshmukh works in the raw frame work of a Bhatt film.
To med the film is a revisit to Basu Bhattacharya’s Aavishkar. The film maker as part of his marital triology win laurels with this Rajesh Sharmila film. The protagonists visit three years of their married life where familiarity breeds contempt.. There the film maker took the times of the middle class family and drew around it the romance and reality of the protagonists. Times have changed. The viewer has already seen the likes of Love Aaj Kal and Wake Up Sid- urban youngsters living together without keeping matrimony as part of the larger scheme.
Here too the protagonists have met up and have moved in together. She is rich, organised and a control freak. He, a freak who detests control, has only failure and rejection and is poor. The narrative however starts with the two walking down memory lanes. Sanjana (Soha Ali Khan) and Akshay (Emraan Hashmi) carry the baggage of the joint past. Even the road to their common past is different. One tries the façade of indifference, one stoic silence. One is willing to talk of the forgotten past (tongue in cheek), one refuses to reach the buried unforgotten past (tongue tied)
Sanjana is the rich daughter of an absentee ‘dad’ who has compensated his absence with wealth. Akshay is a poor struggling artist with middle class parents back home . He who wears his angst on his sleeve. At art school to learn painting he is already a guy with a strong opinion. Like the fictional Howard Rooke (the standard rebellion in the world of Self Believers) he refuses to compromise or even hold back his scathing opinions. The relationship is revealed in short stints from the past. The two share a very warm relationship – but somewhere the pressures of life creeps into the emotional space. Typical of the times, again, they have their ups and downs . Sanjana volunteers assistance, Akshay recoils. She probes, he cocoons. In the ocean of his rejection, there is simply no possibility of sharing his barren space of defeat. She is eager to take on the relationship. He is the hesitant recuse. At every stage she seeks the warmth of bondage, he the calm of recluse.
Akshaye is the artist who craves for success- and on his own terms. He cannot take rejection( can anybody?) He suffers in silence and even in company draws his invincible circle. The non penetrable area of his emotions challenge Sanjana who cannot perceive the emotional problems of her love form the stance of her luxury based life. At one stage the embers of the initial romance disintegrate into the bitter quad of mismatched expectations. They drift, move their respective paths and meet again.
This time it is not the picturesque Cape Town. It is Mumbai on its worst evening – July 26, 2k5, when rain played villain. The compulsions of the situation and the now successful protagonist is willing to take on the relationship… The high voltage story of expectations, failures, frustrations, and love suddenly is swept by the current of the Mumbai night. The script shifts pace, direction and content and leads to the death of friend (Mantra) who is electrocuted. Shocked the prime players now reach out…
Apart from its semblances to a few contemporary films, it forces you to take a compare with Aavishkar (Rajesh-Sharmila¬ –Basu Bhatacharya) classic) in a different time zone. While smooch specialist Emraan looks the role he also adds a high degree of credibility with an accurate mix of simmering anger and frustration. Good performance.. It is however Soha who really steals the show. As an actress she grows with the character and justifies the rich tradition she inherits in Aavishkar. Soha now gives it a classic new interpretation. It is a stand out performance and arguably one of the best this year. Full credit to director Kunal Deshmukh for not loosing focus. The many layers of human relationships in contrasting persona is narrated with a soreness that is a signature product of the Bhatt factory.. May not be a wonderful movie. It is a statement making moving film.
It is interestingly a film that eschews moral stances and delves with life in a true world. The later moments of the film when the Mumbai night of storm and hijack the narration, do not have the same credibility that the relation phase of the screenplay has. Even here, the warm chemistry between the stars nearly makes up for the other short comings. Even the chemistry between the sophisticated Soha and the notorious Emraan has a novelty that makes it less filmy. The film is interesting. Intriguing.

L.Ravichander