Photograph, 2019.
Directed by Ritesh Batra.
Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra and Farrukh Jaffar.
SYNOPSIS:
A Mumbai street photographer asks a customer to pose as his fiancée when his over-bearing grandmother comes to visit.
Humble is very much the word to describe Ritesh Batra’s Photograph. It’s a humble, unassuming movie about humble, unassuming people, set amidst the chaotic bustle of Mumbai. Batra’s directorial eye is a sensitive, tender one, seeking to uncover the vestiges of complex humanity beneath the broad strokes of his central conceit. For the most part, he succeeds.
Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a middle-aged street photographer in Mumbai, making his money by flogging portraits of tourists that he prints on a cumbersome handheld device – a business thwarted in the age of the selfie. He faces constant pressure from his loving, but demanding grandmother Dadi (Farrukh Jaffar) to find himself a wife and settle down. Tired of her over-bearing instincts, he tells her he is engaged and sends a photograph he took of timid student Miloni (Sanya Malhotra). When Dadi decides to visit, Rafi convinces Miloni to continue the charade in person.
The premise is simple, familiar to a million Hollywood romcoms and all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood tales alike. Batra, however, is aware of that and uses the familiarity of the conceit to illuminate his characters. “The stories are all the same in movies these days,” opines Rafi in a late scene, but this movie is anything other than the norm, existing in the fuzzy, awkward spaces between the more simple emotions. There are no grandstanding declarations of love here, and the movie deliberately eschews splashy drama, but Batra’s script intelligently picks at those grey areas.
Contrast is at the core of the relationship between the two halves of Photograph‘s central romance. Rafi and Miloni are from different ends of the class spectrum and are also completely different people, with Rafi emotionally expressive while Miloni is timid and inscrutable. It’s difficult not to fall for Siddiqui’s charming, soulful performance and Miloni is equally adept at conjuring a woman who craves a simple life, but feels ensnared by the expectations of her family.
Truly standing out amidst the talented ensemble, though, is the octogenarian Farrukh Jaffar as Dadi. She gets the funniest dialogue in the film and has the universal feel of the slightly dotty grandmother, transcending the cultural context of her very specific brand of devotion to the concept of her grandson’s marital bliss. She’s arguably the broadest archetype in a movie full of more nuanced characters, but she helps to inject energy into a story that’s deliberately somewhat lacking in direction.
The problem is that Batra’s return to India – he followed breakout The Lunchbox with English language features The Sense of an Ending and Our Souls At Night – is a meandering one. Numerous plot threads are introduced, but never seem to pay off – Rafi’s bizarre quest to find a discontinued brand of cola – and the central deceit doesn’t deliver the promised outpouring of emotion. Photograph is an interesting examination of a complex relationship, but it’s one that never quite commits to any particular narrative thrust, feeling somewhat rudderless as a result.
With that said, Batra’s return to Asia is an engrossing and intriguing drama, helped over the finishing line by the subtlety of its performances. Those performances do enough work to plug the various holes in this narrative boat, but its abrupt ending ends things on a bit of an unsatisfying note. It’s easy to criticise movies that tie everything up in an overly neat bow, but this one isn’t really tied up at all.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Tom Beasley is a freelance film journalist and wrestling fan. Follow him on Twitter via @TomJBeasley for movie opinions, wrestling stuff and puns.
