Yasmin: Look Imran, Marine Drive....People throng this place everyday to eat bhel puri, pav bhaji...I think people come here more for fresh air...which is in short supply. The sea air is so different, it smells of people's desires....
After a drinking session with friends at a pub, the conversation more often than not veers towards movies. As I was telling my friend about my 3rd unsuccessful attempt at watching Ranjhaana (and his assurance that I need to reach till the point where the characters start showing darker shades), for some reason I was reminded of Dhobi Ghat - not your typical Bollywood love story. And I had to come home and watch it again, for the third time.
Dhobi Ghat is the story of a city with four different lives and their aspirations and subsequent disappointments. Shai (Monica Dogra) is an investment banker from NY who is on a sabbatical in Mumbai and has combined her research project with her hobby in photography to get a new perspective. While attending an art exhibition of painter Arun (Aamir Khan), they meet and strike a chord. After a few drinks that night, the inevitable happens and Arun is not quite sure the next morning if he really wanted it. As he makes it clear to Shai about he being a loner and not really a relationship kind of a guy, they drift apart for a while. Shai meets Munna (Prateek), the dhobi, and again starts feeling excited at knowing that Munna is a common point of contact between her and Arun. As they become friends, Shai unknowingly leads Munna on to believing that they could be a pair while all she really wants is to get closer to Arun through him.
Meanwhile Arun moves to a new place where he finds a few videotapes that belonged to the previous tenant, Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra). When curiosity gets the better of him, Arun slowly starts delving more and more into Yasmin's life through those tapes which are in the form of letters to her brother. Shai yearns for Arun's attention while going on with her life; Yasmin longs for her brother as her marriage seems to be heading into trouble; Munna dreams of a life with Shai, which he knows is not even a distant possibility; Arun finally gets to experience the ending of her mystery woman from the tapes. Disappointment awaits everyone.
Writer and director Kiran Rao makes a great debut with a beautiful story on unrequited love. Within the slow pace of the story, the details about social status in Indian society are beautifully woven in every scene. And quite ironically, the slow pace depicts the ordinary lives of people in a supposedly extraordinary fast-paced city. While not much needs to be written about Aamir Khan's performance, the other three characters are quite a surprise. Monica Dogra is the girl-next-door that you'd fall in love with, while Kriti Malhotra plays the role of a shy, repressed woman with ease. Prateek has a charming innocence about him that quite fits the role of the naive dhobi he is playing. This is a movie I'd strongly recommend to anyone who says Bollywood lacks originality.
Rating: 7.5/10
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