Movie shot: Ritesh Batra, charming ode to Mumbai from Nawazuddin Siddiqui

The film Photograph has already been a topic of discussion in the prestigious Sundance and Berlin International Film Festivals, with many accolades, calling it a festival film. Most of the films that fall into this category have the particularity of being celebrated at festivals and having then aroused mixed reactions at home.
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With Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sanya Malhotra, The photographs are likely to suffer the same fate. During the screening of the film, the film had diametrically opposed opinions. Mine falls safely in the favorable category. Ritesh Batra, the director and screenwriter of this film – also director of films like The Lunchbox, The Meaning of an End and Our Souls At Night – Told Beautiful stories where the most improbable people find a respite from their loneliness in the face of an unexpected person. Photo a film about Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a street photographer, one of the many migrants who arrive from Uttar Pradesh to the city looking for a way to sustenance and Miloni (Sanya Malhotra), a girl from Gujarati, is such.

The two disparate characters meet at the Gateway of India, this unique place in Mumbai still teeming with tourists and photographers like Rafi, making it the perfect setting for this chance encounter. While Miloni loses her family in the crowd, she falls on Rafi who makes his usual speech. And at this moment when Miloni authorizes Rafi to click on his picture, we know that an instantaneous link was formed. This vision becomes symbolic of what is meant to be. Miloni looks happier on the picture than she is and Rafi becomes the unexpected initiator of this happiness.

Batra's subversion of the base film in Hindi – a poor girl who meets a rich boy and a romance ensuing between heartbeats – a pure genius. Rafi and Miloni are a strange couple, but they are able to fill an indefinable void in everyone's life. Quite like Ila and Saajan in The Lunchbox. The two men can meet only when they have to separate, they give themselves hope, happiness and meaning.

In a particularly skilful manner, Batra infuses into his narrative a subtle humor created by the friends of Rafi and his Dadi (Farukh). Jafar). The fact that Dadi de Rafi is on a hunger strike to find a wife of choice is the subject of much joy in the film and is also the reason that brings him closer to him and Miloni. – as and corresponds to the realism that characterizes Batra's films. The dialogues are clear – that it is the colorful jargon of UP migrant workers and the stories they share or taxi drivers with their clever side – they are relevant. The details of the film, its conception of production – a clbad of approved accounting coaching that bears the name of its teacher interpreted by Jim Sarbh – are impeccable. Or the little slum that houses Rafi and his friends is another. This is a par excellence story of Mumbai. An ode to a city built and defined by its working clbad.

Amongst the actors, Siddiqui interprets Rafi with flawless ease and refreshing restraint. His performance is so sublime that one can dare to say that he does not act, he is just the character. The sincere performance of Malhotra shines despite its somewhat subscribed character. The wider cast is also very appropriate. Even the roles of Akash Sinha, Geetanjali Kulkarni and Vijay Raaz are perfectly suited to the story, the actors playing their roles perfectly. However, the hero should be Farrukh Jaffar, whose role as Dadi is a tour de force. His conversations with Rafi about their lives, his observations on Miloni are both cheerful and ripe. The India of small cities and some of its virtues are indeed well engraved in all the characters and the performance performances of all the actors make them memorable.

Regardless of what Photograph realizes in terms of box. Office winnings, the film, a story of O. Henrisque, leaves an idiosyncratic imprint of Mumbai and its original stories that we love very much.

Notation: 4/5

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