Bollywood (Kabhi Alvida Naa Kenha)

Yesterday I made the trek to Artesia to see this (I half wanted the over the top angst of Omkara but SRK was too tempting for one of the people I went with). It's an all star film about two couples whose various parties meet up at different stages and two of whom have an affair. The two that do are the very lovely Rani Mukherjee (Maya) and the also very excellent Sharukh Khan (Dev); Rhea is married to a man that she doesn't love and never did (the film suggests that she married him out of friendship and some poorly timed sense of gratitude), Dev is a former soccer star who has had a debilitating injury and now is a very angry man. Even with Maya, whom he falls in love with. Their spouses are nice people, but at least in Maya's case, entirely unsuitable for their partners. Everyone in this film has good intentions - Maya and Dev become friends because they are both in unhappy marriages and want to try and make them work - but well, it doesn't work out like that at all.

The New York Times is rather dismissive of this film as standard Bollywood fare with the singing and the dancing, but this is because whoever reviewed it quite clearly does not approve of these things in films and thus wishes that Bollywood would make totally different films that they can approve of: I got the impression they were miffed because the film wasn't French or something like that. As I like the singing and the dancing and the over the topness of Bollywood I wish someone would point out that not all cinema has to look the same.

But anyway! This film is often cheesy to be sure, but still quite good. Behind the cut are pictures of the lovely looking and angst-ridden people in the film. There are also some plot spoilers, but not for the ending.

( Pictures, which are very much not dial up friendly )