It is no breaking news that the nation is crazy about two things – Cricket and Cinema – but mixing the two together has never proved to be fruitful, be it dates or relationships. Hence the industry is usually wary of clashing any big releases in the event of the Men in Blue hitting the grounds. With the ongoing World Cup, the past few weeks have seen almost negligible releases with Tanu Weds Manu being the only offering of the season that has managed to wade through with decent numbers. Maintaining the faith, March has a single low-budget movie Yeh Faasley directed by debutant Yogesh Mittal. Since the film had nil promotions and trailers, promos weren’t flashing frequently, there were hardly any pre-conceived notions or expectations. But expectation is a double-edge sword which usually sums the fate of a film. So how does Yeh Faasley fare due to the absence of it? Read on.
Protective single-father Devinder Dua (Anupam Kher) dotes on his daughter Arunima (Tena Desai) who is happy to reciprocate his feelings having lost her mother at an early age. She believes her parents shared an amicable marriage but is forced to reassess when she finds a will left behind by her mother, which leads to her to several different versions of the truth. While her questions about her mother are brushed aside by her father, she is determined to unravel a hidden past even at the cost of jeopardizing the father-daughter relationship.
For Anupam Kher, having built expertise over his career spanning 30 years, the role of Devinder Dua is a cake-walk. He is undoubtedly one of the finer artistes the industry has, and after performances like Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Maara, Lamhaa, or Daddy etc, you cannot expect any less. Tena Desae shows promise as a newcomer. Considering most of her scenes, especially emotional ones are with Anupam Kher, she does a swell job in keeping her own.
On the outside of it, at a broader spectrum, the movie has an appealing although outdated storyline to it. It even starts quite interestingly with the few reels providing a wonderful build-up.
Unfortunately, the writers (ironically as per wiki, there are 5 of them) make a mess as the movie tries to steer forward, which even the best of performances wouldn’t be able to salvage. The story movies in a circle, starting at a point, coming back to it after some reels, and going over the same point again, almost disregarding that it has been already dealt with. After some engaging scenes in the first half, the film tries too hard to stick to its theme but gets convoluted in the ‘finding-the-secret’ second half that you feel anxious to leave your seat in despair.
I won’t go into detailing other technical areas such as the music, background score (or the lack of it when needed) as they are bland, inconsistent and songs could have been done away with. They add no value to the proceedings and the omission of it would not have been significant. The cinematography as well as editing are equally poor, inept and come across as amateurish.
Many a times, upon watching a movie I’m forced to consider that the matter probably looked good on paper rather than celluloid. Yeh Faasley is one those very few movies that works quite the opposite, the inconsistencies in the screenplay impossible to reason with. The backdrop of father-daughter relationship, done rarely in Hindi cinema, is overwhelming. Multiple genres intertwined needlessly make it difficult to make sense of the protagonist’s emotions. Lesser sense can be made of the film as a whole. At one point of time Anupam Kher says “Mein akela hi chala tha, akela hi chalunga”, this could very well mirror the state of the director after the film’s release. Sadly to say, in some ways, Yeh Faasley had strong makings of a decent father-daughter based thriller, but isn’t crafted out well, thus making it an unsatisfactory film experience.
