Udita Jhunjhunwala 

Lovesongs 

Direction: Jayabrato Chatterjee
Cast: Jaya Bachchan, Om Puri, Mallika Sarabhai, Shahana Chatterjee
Rating: *

Jaya Bachchan, Om Puri and Mallika Sarabhai: Please stand up and explain why you agreed to work in this directorial disaster? Why you consented to wearing absurd wigs and mouthing clumsy dialogues?

Surely you could see that Lovesongs was likely to be a tuneless travesty from paper stage when you read the scene where a mute housekeeper answers the telephone and agitatedly tries to communicate, or the grandson describes the curve balls thrown to his grandmother as hitting her “boom, boom, boom” (no kidding).

Over-acting by the veterans, hamming by the newcomers, an amateur screenplay, incongruent music (Usha Uthup), theatrical direction and slopping editing are only some of the problems with this film. Worst of all is the discomfort of many of the actors delivering dialogues in English, and worse still, Bonglish! And what’s with referring to the grandmother as ‘Nans’?
 
When Rohan (Prithviraj Choudhary) confronts his fiercely independent grandmother Mridula (Jaya Bachchan) about her past and the tumultuous relationship she shared with her daughter - his mother — Palaash (Shahana Chatterjee), several skeletons come tumbling out of the closet.

Primary among these is Mridula’s secret love affair with a poet called Aftaab Jaffrey (Om Puri), and as we later discover, the impact this has on her complex bond with Palaash. If you are wondering where Mallika Sarabhai fits in, and if you fail to recognise her in that gaudy garb, you will be forgiven. She appears post-interval as Rabea, a retired speech therapist, now an alcoholic despairing over her loveless marriage to Aftaab.

Author and director Jayabrato Chatterjee’s experience as a documentary and short feature maker for NGOs seeps into the narrative and style here too, with doses of Films Division style edutainment. Though he may have attempted to offer his daughter Shahana a platform, Lovesongs is founded on a weak premise that fails to hit the high notes, even at crucial moments of confrontation and revelation, leaving you squirming in your seat in embarrassment