The Lunchbox (***)

The serendipitous mix-up has served the basis for many a romantic comedy, but quiet drama predominates here. Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a Mumbai housewife whose hot lunches inadvertently get routed to government worker Saajan (Irrfan Khan) instead of her husband. With minimal set-up but perhaps a touch of contrivance — how is it that the delivery service suddenly starts making the same mistake every day? — the housewife and the office worker begin a correspondence. In no time the talk turns from food to other things. The spice that goes into Ila’s delicious meals has gone out of her marriage; Saajan, a widower about to take early retirement, lives a lonely life.

And so they pass old-fashioned notes on paper while never seeing each other. The chaste exchange, which reminded me of the 1987 film 84 Charing Cross Road, is as much about the need to unburden oneself as about the very gentle romantic subtext. The two leads serve as somewhat idealized recipients these wishes folded in paper, and the appeal of the film is very much about the lovely idea that one might accidentally find such a person. The only other significant character is the man who will replace Saajan at his job, although Ila has an upstairs neighbor who is heard, but not seen. For those who enjoyed the view of Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire, this movie presents it as equally bustling, but a little less terrifying.


Inasmuch as the two main characters have not met and do not really know each other, the ending carries the story forward, but not too far, and that seems just right.

IMDb link

viewed 4/3/14 7:10 pm at Ritz East and posted 4/3/14

Trishna (**3/4)

Transplanting a novel like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) to the present day might be problematic, since the cultural context is so specific. The rigid hierarchies of Victorian England no longer exist in modern Britain. But they do in India, where traveling from a remote village to a city like Mumbai is, in some respects, to travel in time as well as distance. In addition to altering the setting, Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation (his third Hardy-inspired drama) heavily abridges and alters the plot, but retains the emphasis on its heroine’s humble origins.

In the course of the story young Trishna (Frieda Pinto) travels from her father’s home in a poor village to Mumbai. The apt cliché is, you can take the girl out of the small town, but not the small town out of the girl. That, however, is both more succinct and more direct than Winterbottom’s script. He tells much of the story visually, and in the way his two leads act and speak. Trishna/Pinto, so deferential at the start of the film that it’s startling, changes as she leaves home. A young man (Riz Ahmed) makes this possible, the worldly, wealthy, son of an Anglo-Indian gentleman (Roshan Seth, playing the only secondary character of any interest). Eventually, the young man changes too.

Their relationship develops slowly, and the movie requires patience. I appreciated the subtlety with which Winterbottom depicts the diversity of modern India. Perhaps the strongest scenes, done with minimum dialogue, show the way Trishna’s relationship with her lover changes when the two leave Mumbai. At the same time, I felt that Winterbottom relied too much on the viewer’s knowledge of the lingering effects of caste. One knows it, but does not always feel it, which is crucial in understanding things as they develop. What should be devastating is merely sad.

IMDb link

viewed 7/24/12 7:30 pm at Ritz East (PFS screening) and reviewed 7/25/12

Slumdog Millionaire (***1/4)

A potentially cheesy rags-to-riches story becomes an urban folk tale in director Danny Boyle’s foray into the mean streets of Mumbai. Boyle has made films in a variety of genres, nearly all of them morality plays in one fashion or another. Best known are Trainspotting, a tale of heroin addiction, and 28 Days Later, the post-apocalyptic zombie hit. Here, he grafts the punky attitude and gritty urbanism of Trainspotting onto a quasi-fable reminiscent of Boyle’s 2004 Millions. Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, best known for a couple of other urban fables, The Full Monty and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, adapted an Indian novel.

British actor Dev Patel plays the lead role of Jamal, suspected of cheating on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, with all of the other roles filled by Indian actors. The childhood scenes of Jamal, his brother, and their female friend Latika are so natural that they anchor a fairly hoary plot later on. The children, non-professionals, speak Hindi with colored supertitles floating on screen. Jamal loses track of his childhood friend, but not his hope or lack of guile. The plot’s structured as flashbacks tied to the questions asked by a host who seems more like Simon Cowell than Regis Philbin. On the threshold of winning the 20 million rupee top prize, Jamal is interrogated because of the unlikeliness of an ill-educated teenager gathering the required knowledge. (In fact, the explanation is only partly convinving, but I went with it, discovering along the way my own ignorance of Indian culture.)

Almost as much of a character as Jamal is the incredibly diverse city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Frequently employing handheld digital cameras, Boyle infuses the film with the sounds and sights of this metropolis of 20 million, though never in a travelogue sort of way. A couple of cruel scenes, one involving a child, earned the film a probably unfair R rating in the US, but the tone is never pitiful, despite the great poverty (and intermittent violence) depicted. It’s a crowd pleaser, mostly in the best sense of the term.

IMDB link

viewed 11/19/08 [screening at Ritz 5]; reviewed 11/21/08