Entertainment Desk:In this debut feature, a familiar sordid tale unfolds in a North Indian �kasba�: a bright-eyed pubescent girl falls for an older man, and takes the relationship into a space we barely acknowledge, let alone depict in our movies.
Sandhya�s (Shweta Tripathi) rocky personal life leads her into finding solace in her school teacher Shyam (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), and as we watch these two do the mating dance, a minor girl and a man who is married, but has a glad eye, a feeling of queasiness assails us. Yes, we know this happens. Passion is no respecter of age, but sex with a minor is illegal, and showing it on screen leads the film into a very grey area.
Sharma clearly has both an eye and an ear. He gets the claustrophobic feel of a small town to a T. His characters feel real, but I missed depth. The whole film and its shockingly brutal climax rests on a flimsy turn which never feels like a solid plot point. Random things happen, and some of those things turn bad, but you need more for the film to have weight.
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Sandhya�s character is the most fleshed out, and Tripathi makes the most of her confused angry fifteen year old, seething with resentment and longing, looking for love. I found Siddiqui muted though, coming through only in a couple of scenes, telegraphing a randiness his character needed more of to be entirely credible. Trimala Adhikari, as Siddiqui�s wife, impresses: she is both sympathetic and suspicious, and rightly so.
Two young boys (Mohammad Samad and Irfan Khan) act as a narrative thread, spying on, and intersecting with the doings of Sandhya and Shyam: the former is just your quintessential little busy-body ; the latter has feelings for the girl. They provide amusement, especially Samad, but some of their banter seems to be played just for laughs.
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Overall, despite some strong moments, the film suffers from slightness and disjointedness: did the censorship process snip off more than we could chew? Was there more? A second film from the clearly talented Sharma will give us a clue.